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Nobel prize in physics!
Oct. 15th, 2015 11:12 pmI have been ever so gently brushed with the most peripheral of emanations from the recently awarded Nobel Prize in Physics by my presence at Carleton University (and the fact I just recently visited SNOLAB where the science happened... with Dr. David Sinclair himself, no less, as our "tour guide"). Here's some links and a few more pictures I took on that trip:
http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/2015/press.html
http://carleton.ca/our-stories/story-archives/nobel-laureate-thanks-carleton/
Dr. David Sinclair, founder of SNOLAB, expounding in SNOLAB:
A look down into a new working area. SNOLAB is already a cleanroom, but smaller temporary ultra-clean cleanrooms are sometimes set up within it for specific experiments (often for cleaning and assembly of sensitive components). You can see one here (the tent-like thing) and another that was open but could be made into a cleanroom again if needed. For scale, those are full height grey storage shelves toward the top of the photo, and a workbench to the left (the green hose thing on the right of the photo above can be seen on the bench in this picture... it's taken from pretty high above). One of the experiments we saw being worked on there was DEAP, an experiment that will be looking for direct evidence of dark matter interactions (a thing we know almost nothing about, and have never observed, but which seems to make up 27% of our universe).
This photo is a reminder that SNOLAB is 2km underground. First, the white coating over the rocks is to keep the dust and small rock fragments from falling into the laboratory that is cut out of the rock. The yellow plates (which are everywhere) are terminators for huge cables that were driven deep into the rock surrounding the human-made caverns, and that keep the surrounding rock under tremendous tension so it doesn't just relax and collapse in on the hole we have dug to work in. Apparently if the blowers ever stop for maintenance, you can sometimes hear rock quakes (and sometimes even with the blowers going). I have been told it is one of the most terrifying things a person can experience.
http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/2015/press.html
http://carleton.ca/our-stories/story-archives/nobel-laureate-thanks-carleton/
Dr. David Sinclair, founder of SNOLAB, expounding in SNOLAB:
A look down into a new working area. SNOLAB is already a cleanroom, but smaller temporary ultra-clean cleanrooms are sometimes set up within it for specific experiments (often for cleaning and assembly of sensitive components). You can see one here (the tent-like thing) and another that was open but could be made into a cleanroom again if needed. For scale, those are full height grey storage shelves toward the top of the photo, and a workbench to the left (the green hose thing on the right of the photo above can be seen on the bench in this picture... it's taken from pretty high above). One of the experiments we saw being worked on there was DEAP, an experiment that will be looking for direct evidence of dark matter interactions (a thing we know almost nothing about, and have never observed, but which seems to make up 27% of our universe).
This photo is a reminder that SNOLAB is 2km underground. First, the white coating over the rocks is to keep the dust and small rock fragments from falling into the laboratory that is cut out of the rock. The yellow plates (which are everywhere) are terminators for huge cables that were driven deep into the rock surrounding the human-made caverns, and that keep the surrounding rock under tremendous tension so it doesn't just relax and collapse in on the hole we have dug to work in. Apparently if the blowers ever stop for maintenance, you can sometimes hear rock quakes (and sometimes even with the blowers going). I have been told it is one of the most terrifying things a person can experience.
