3 ms·
I was lucky to take a tour of the Livingston, LA facility. It's within about an hour's drive north of New Orleans. Very much worth a visit. https://goo.gl/maps
by rainbowzootsuit 3y ago
I was lucky to take a tour of the Livingston, LA facility. It's within about an hour's drive north of New Orleans. Very much worth a visit.
https://goo.gl/maps/9fLFCVqjumx1LSkXA https://goo.gl/maps/9fLFCVqjumx1LSkXA
As someone who's worked on laboratory ultra-high vacuum systems the ~2m diameter by 4km long arms that are vacuum chambers are quite impressive.
A "fun fact" from the tour was that they had a road grading company construct the underlayer for the support of the arms. They asked the company to set the angle of the grading to equal the negative curvature of the earth as the arms have to be straight in space while a surface that's graded "flat" would end up following the curvature of the earth.
- ramraj07 3y agoThe irony of one part of humanity: led mainly by People in the most prosperous country, measuring ever vanishing amounts of interference at the length of a proton to detect exploding stars, and they have to account for among other things the curvature of this planet to the millimetre. Just a few miles away (and likely everywhere) in the same country there are many people growing in number who insist for some reason that the earth is flat. I am genuinely flummoxed why that's still a thing.
- mlindner 3y agoFlat earth conspiracy is not widespread and is not growing. It’s a thing that’s primarily on the internet. On the grand scheme of things there’s bigger things to worry about than what a tiny fraction of people think.
- namaria 3y agoIt's way easier, and more common, to be wrong than to be right.