Zany Scientists Make World's Most Expensive Pair Of X-Ray Glasses

Nothing says funny like X-Ray glasses. And scientists are nothing if not funny. Take those fun-loving guys at Stanford University's Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) in Menlo Park, California. They know that Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Illinois will be shut down by 2010 and that Austrians are determined to have the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) operating in Geneva by 2007. That means the pressure is on if the USA is going to be allowed the privilege of paying around $9 billion for the International Linear Collider (ILC), which should begin engineering in 2010. The guys at SLAC knew they needed to be bold. To quote from the greatest movie ever made; "No bucks, no Buck Rogers." So what did they do to make a bold splash and get Americans excited about physics again? Did they hire Elisabeth Shue and have her invent cold fusion to solve all of our energy problems? No. Did they build attack ships and set them on fire off the shoulder of Orion or watch C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate? No again. Did they at least turn their particle accelerator into giant X-ray glasses and take naughty pictures of Adriana Lima through her clothes? Not quite. Instead, they turned their particle accelerator into giant X-ray glasses to see some old writing by a Monk. ( insert sounds of crickets chirping here ) Apparently this writing was significant because it was done 1000 years ago and then erased a few hundred years later. It doesn't seem to matter that, even if it was done 1000 years ago, that's still 1300 years after Archimedes lived. So I'm thinking he didn't add a lot of creative mathematics in those 1300 years he was dead. But those SLAC guys wanted to be certain they weren't missing anything important in the works of Archimedes. I will help them with all they need to know: a floating body displaces its weight and a submerged body displaces its volume. Me, I think they should have turned the ol' glasses on Adriana. I bet she would get a "Eureka!" out of most scientists.