For sale: giant lab "gantries," slightly used, FOB Indiana

[doctorow]

Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2017/08/14/open-the-pod-doors-hal.html

…

[NashRambler]

Torque tests on large-scale electric motors? God, I hope the true explanation is more interesting than my lame-ass theory.

[uniqueusername]

Giant rock tumblers!

[FFabian]

Cages for aliens from outer space?

[kpkpkp]

Early stargate prototypes, but the project was shut down after lab assistant and test tube accidentally reduced to short burst of Hawking radiation

[wil9000]

I know a failed time machine when I see one.

[Sludge]

As if my neighborhood wasn’t gantrified enough already.

[randomness]

These are part of a medical radiation treatment system. Here is a link to a patent diagram of a similar assembly. http://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/US7997553B2/US07997553-20110816-D00000.png

This sits at the end of the beamline, and allows the aiming/positioning of the beam in the right location.

Here’s a pic in situ.

Edit: Added more info

[HMSGoose]

But did you see a failed time machine, or will you have yet to see the return of what will someday have already been a successful time machine?

[NashRambler]

Thank you!

[FGD135]

Elon Musk will buy them for his secret volcano lair.

[William_Tam]

This is at what used to be the IU Cyclotron Facility, a particle accelerator and medium-energy physics research lab in Bloomington, Indiana. This equipment is from when they were looking for ways to repurpose the proton beam they’d gotten going in the early 70s and that that had largely outlived it’s research purpose by the mid 90s, which is when I worked there in my first sysadmin job. Proton beam therapy has become a real thing, and much of the pioneering work was done at IUCF. www.iucf.indiana.edu was one of the earlier websites in the world (remember that Tim Berners-Lee started the WWW as a way for CERN and other physics labs to share docs) and I built my first website there.

IUCF became the Midwest Proton Research Institute, and then closed down finally in 2014. Lots of very smart people, a fun mix of theoretical physicists and hardcore engineers.