UMTravels

Before I get to the Dark Matter, let’s cover lunch which is connected to Dark Matter, though I had the fish:

That’s my crazy buddy, Seth, and, yes, we are having cocktails our lunch at Mamma Melina near U Village:

I like to call this the “Tuesday Trifecta”. I get to see Seth, I get to go to UW Surplus, and there is a Safeway nearby with decent bargain racks. But today is a little extra special in that Seth gave me a tour of the lab that he is working at UW:

That would be the Axion Dark Matter eXperiment. Last fall both Wired and The National Geographic did articles about this experiment, but here is the overview from WikiPedia:

The Axion Dark Matter Experiment (ADMX, also written as Axion Dark Matter eXperiment in the project’s documentation) uses a resonant microwave cavity within a large superconducting magnet to search for cold dark matter axions in the local galactic dark matter halo. Unusually for a dark matter detector, it is not located deep underground. Sited at the Center for Experimental Nuclear Physics and Astrophysics (CENPA) at the University of Washington, ADMX is a large collaborative effort with researchers from universities and laboratories around the world.

While the science is WAY over my head, the geek in me loved the machinery:

The Counting/Control Room – note 60’s-70’s era equipment banks:

And one of the “messy” arts (fabrication) areas:

Complete with a World War II artillery turntable mount for a portion of the floor above:

I love my geeky friends.

Next up is UW Surplus, where many thinks over the years have come into my life…

Sadly, nothing today strikes my fancy, but these “thrones” are tempting:

A quick run through Safeway, picked up a few discount items, and then home to bed for a nap.

Next week in the world of nerdy tours will be the Nevada National Security Site north of Las Vegas.

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