Post #217,360
8/3/05 11:41:26 PM
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Regular?
Wouldn't know - I'm irregularly-irregular it seems. But I've arrived at a decent accommodation of all these transistors and their flaky-human directors. Hell, even the basic formula, F=MA from Physics 101-Remedial should give any car/cycle pilot some sobriety.. [Hah]
I read the links re crashes and have read others before. Since I've been around complex techno for ~1.5 careers, and particle accelerators (with their wiring, control systems, hydraulics, elaborate vac. systems etc.) are more complex than any of these special-purpose Jumbo Spam-in-Can contraptions:
I think it best to have settled your metaphysical questions, well before boarding. Not merely Probability/Statistics but all the human errors of inattention will be coming together quite beyond anyone's wishful 'algorithm for success'. You cannot "improve your personal chances" IMhO - that IS pixie dust.
We Know! that 'problems' are a function of n! in complex assemblages.. (n-factorial; for the non arithmetical: 6!= 6x5x4x3x2 = that kinda thing. BIG numbers fast)
Yet, I marvelled at seeing/keeping an entire accelerator complex running more than an entire week, 24/7 -- with just the ~10min checks inside, about every 4-6 hours; the 'running' continued All that time - only the particle beam was turned off, periodically. I'd have bet against this performance.. and lost.
(Mondo main accelerator magnet-ring plus a heavy-ion Linac 'injector' located up a hill - the two never were planned to be connected, hence a special beamline down that hill - had to work all this time, too.)
So I keep that which I Witnessed in mind, and don't worry about these planes. (Though I will still despise their handling of Moi as crammed-in cargo, natch.) Knowing it's a crap shoot is actually a relief! from imagining any need to personally 'Check things', y'know?
That's my own 'solution' to the jelloware's constant auto-imaginings,
Ashton
Now, for those who enjoy Worrying - think about all those nuclear missiles still. on. 24/7. Ready. Alert. despite .. the so evident Absence-of-Any SANE 'need' whatsoever.
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Post #217,404
8/4/05 8:19:13 AM
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I recently found out that my FIL worked out there.
He may have even been a predecessor of yours on a system. Physical Review Volume 75, Number 9, May 1, 1949, pp. 1456-1471
Proceedings of the American Physical Society
Minutes of the Meeting at the University of California, At Berkeley, California
February 3-5, 1949
[...]
H11. Radiation Field of the 184-Cyclotron.* W.K. Benson, Jr., R.L. Mather, B.J. Mover, and Joseph Yater, University of California, Berkeley - The distribution and intensity of the radiation field outside the shielding of the 184" cyclotron have been studied with various types of detectors. Three-dimensional surveys were made with proton recoil counter, calibrated slow neutron counter, and an ion chamber so constructed as to read approximately the "roentgen equivalent physical" dosage rate. Average values at normal areas of habitation are: 60 slow neutrons cm^-2 sec.^-1, 0.5 milli-rep/hr., and a fast neutron flux about an order of magnitude below tolerance. Determination of the actual value for fast neutron flux depends on energy distribution assumed. Studies of this are in progress. Calibrated indium foil measurements of slow neutron flux as a function of depth in the 10-ft. concrete shielding indicate, apart from transition and boundary effects, an attenuation with a half-value thickness of 7 to 8 inches, and a value at the outside surface in agreement with that mentioned above.
* This work was done under the auspices of the AEC. Joe enjoyed his time out there very much. He got his Masters at Cal. Did you work on the same system? (I'd imagine not - when I was at Chicago they had a lab building that was still called the Cyclotron even though it had been removed years before.) Joe's prose could be pretty flowery at times too. Hmmmmmm. The [link|http://aries.mos.org/sixdegrees/|Six Degrees] of Ashton B.? :-) Cheers, Scott.
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Post #217,480
8/4/05 1:52:05 PM
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{chortle}
Gawd.. Six Degrees ==> Someone here! has been around ShrubRove, somewhere somehow :(
{icky}
Cyclotron pretty long-tooth by my tenure; not useful for the project mentioned:
The Bevatron was a circle-with-straight-sections; 50' radius of the arcs, for perspective. Don't recall encountering the above folk, but Nobelists (and their groups, grad-students doing most of the work, natch) were as thick as Repos at a merger in the Caymans, chaired by ol' Chain-saw whatsisname.
The Super-Hilac produced many (most?) of the Trans-Uranic additions to the Periodic Chart (Thanks! Mendeleev) - many with Al Ghiorso's name on them. (Got a Roosian note from him at the time of Apollo-Soyuz linkup / with new Rooski stamp First-Day Cover! commemorating that event.)
Hooking the two together (ie using the heavy-ion capabilities of the HILAC as 'injector' for the 2.2 GeV/c Bevatron) became both thinkable and techno- practical in early '70s, despite their physical separation (including significant elevation! differences).
PDPs were arriving, to accommodate the pulsing of (beam optics) quadrupole fields, with requisite accuracy. Then too, the first synchrotron guide field ever to be minicomputer controlled - was the Bevatron, via PDP-8 (Thanks! Don Evans et al).
Put 'em together and create YAN acronym: the Bevalac. (One MAD Party when the first beam made it all the way to full energy! - Glenn Seaborg + cast of hundreds vas dere: I too - in my mess-dress ex-AF uniform + Mad Hatter hat.) Got a great pic, too...
Fun stuff (and for moi, Trebly-so, for there being no marketing ergo lying, nor a 'product' to sell). I Love wissenschaffts; the antithesis of bizness fuckwittery. As Sigourney said so eloquently, Lucky.. lucky.. lucky..
Physics Lives homo-sap annihilates, at the drop-of-a-hat
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Post #217,486
8/4/05 2:03:52 PM
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Thanks. Is this your old haunting ground?
[link|http://maps.google.com/maps?q=lawrence+berkeley+laboratory,+berkeley+california&ll=37.876979,-122.250034&spn=0.003677,0.007135&t=h&num=10&start=0&hl=en|Google Maps]. The one with the brown roof (upper left) or the one with the, um, nipple, on the lower right?
I think Joe also did some work at SLAC, but I haven't been able to document that yet. I've little doubt that it was all before your time - he went East in the '50s.
Cheers, Scott.
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Post #217,499
8/4/05 2:57:52 PM
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{snerfl}
WOW! - damn near down to the {ghost of my} Citro\ufffdn in the tiny parking lot. Amazing the techno- which we now {yawn} not-even-Notice, what with instant satiation. Jaded, We (when not being insufferable, too).
Eerie ... those road names and to know the bodies that go with them all. ('Course I'ze got a whole town: Ashton-under-Lyne IIRC ;-)
Yup, brown roof er Brown-roof :-0 Grand Vista of entire SF Bay Area, 3 bridges - from atop that roof! (Where there were vents for stuff like Liq. Hydrogen targets n'such) Would occasionally have the Shrammsberg and a goodie-basket from Narsai's *** up there. Once with SO. Lovely..
But it's dead, Jim. Bevatron bought It (or rather - could no longer pay-for It) in '93. No more Medical Cave for heavy-ion irradiation of tumored-folk: of the unique precision whereby [Bragg Peak] one could peel an orange, without harming either the inner pulp or the outer skin.
Priorities. You could build a new brewery or stadium for ..
Thanks for the mammary (Oh - that tit-thingie appears to be atop the 88" cyclotron) Maybe - by now - a surveillance camera kiosk for Fatherland Security? - 88" a much later, cleverer machine than the hoary First Big 'accelerator': the 184" Cyclotron. Not sure even, if that building still stands.
Ernest Orlando Lawrence pretty much started the rush (with acolyte Livingston et al spreading physics-fever even to the Rust Belt) etc.
[There's yer one-line history of particle accelerators in the world]
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Post #217,516
8/4/05 3:23:32 PM
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ad some hair to this picture, slim down the jawline
[link|http://photos.olson-systems.com/displayimage.php?album=14&pos=0|http://photos.olson-...hp?album=14&pos=0] gentleman in question actually assisted in building the first livermore computer, thanx, bill
Just call me Mr. Lynch \\
Any opinions expressed by me are mine alone, posted from my home computer, on my own time as a free american and do not reflect the opinions of any person or company that I have had professional relations with in the past 49 years. meep questions, help? [link|mailto:pappas@catholic.org|email pappas at catholic.org]
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