CERN levels up with new superconducting karts
home.cern394 points by fnands 5 days ago
394 points by fnands 5 days ago
This got me. Thought it was real, busted out laughing when I read the project leads name. It still didn't click.
Small clue here too, maybe more subtle:
> explained school director, Rosalina Pfirsich, looking up from her storybook
Pfirsich in German means Peach, as in Princess Peach :D
Also "project leader Mario Idraulico" (i.e. "hydraulic" in Italian) or "Safety coordinator Luigi Fratello" ("Brother Luigi").
They’ve also got:
> schoolteacher Yoshi Kyouryuu, mid-way through painting spots on eggs
You somehow identified the last possible, most obscure clue. Mario, Luigi, Rosalina, and Yoshi show up before that.
Man I fell for it until I saw your post. In fact, I was just about to post what the man's name means in Italian.
I was even going to point out how ironic it is that the mans first name and last name fit together so well.
In my defense I only got as far as idraulico and missed the "Mamma mia, they're super!"
Someone was saying "can we just not with April fools" this year because everything is so grim and dire in the world... but I think this is such a perfect level we need. I could go for more whimsy like this.
This one was good. It was pretty low-stakes and not anything that would impact anyone. For a while there, companies like Google were announcing products that sounded like a good idea, but turned out were just them trolling everyone over things people had been requesting for a long time.
Their heyday of good jokes was also when they hadn't produced any ads and seemed like an underdog. "Don't Be Evil" days.
Vibe-wise they all feel closer to Raytheon and I sure as fuck wouldn't want to see an attempt at a whimsical joke from Raytheon.
I'd of said I had limited appetite for April fools gubbins this year too but this still made me smile :)
For me it was easier. While I forgot it was first april, the image was too outrageous. Looked like AI-generated slop.
They may have had more success with another image. AI slop made us lazy.
IMO a made up "artist conception" picture on an article like this would have been perfectly appropriate, we've seen worse (think of the whole NEOM thingy).
Takes me back to the week we all thought room temperature super conductors might be a solved problem.
That served a useful purpose- it let you objectively identify how gullible everyone you know is.
There was more than enough skepticism and cautious optimism too. While it sounded too soon to be real, it wasn't unlike carbon nanotubes, graphene, or solid state batteries — previously unachievable material-tech getting validation in the lab, with a 20yr pipeline for global production. With even nuclear fusion being achieved in very specific / limited instances in the last decade, it's not inconceivable to hope that maybe RTSC are just around the corner.
It also served the purpose of finding out who the cynical Debbie Downers who have no hope are as well!
How?
The joke is, more or less, you can reduce everyone into two piles. But that's almost assuredly wrong.
It's very very hard to have what most people would call "autistic" levels of rationality in discourse in this world. But if you hold yourself to high standards, you quickly compute the logical argument OP is making (people who were excited were gullible marks etc. etc.) and realize it's wrong in several different ways (happy to explicate if unclear).
This is, of course, very easy if you were A) excited and B) didn't think it'd come to pass. Also observing that A does not imply B and vice versa is the minimally sufficient observation to rule out OPs comment being rational*
* n.b. "rational" means something akin to "not affected by a psychoactive disorder" in everyday discourse. In philosophy / logic class, it means, the statements x conclusion are internally coherent. "The moon is made of cheese because it is yellow" is rational, "The moon is made of cheese because Teddy Roosevelt likes cheese" is irrational. "The moon is made of cheese because the Pope likes cheese" is rational with the implied premises "God controls all, and he loves the pope"
If your hope for the future is based on believing the most obviously-impossible technological claim in the world, you're way more cynical than I am.
Why are room temperature superconductors an 'obviously-impossible' technological claim?
Asking since we've managed to increase superconductor temperature several times in the past, right? (to ~ -130 degrees celsius right now IIRC). Why is our current temperature of, say ~30 degrees celsius special?
If you look at a list of known superconductors and their transition temperatures - it appears that the difficulty of getting a material to superconduct is proportional some unfriendly power of the absolute temperature.
Superconducting does seem much easier under a few hundred GPa's of pressure - but that's less convenient to maintain than liquid helium cooling.
> Why are room temperature superconductors an 'obviously-impossible' technological claim?
Disclaimer - all I know about superconductors, I know from high school physics, and I left high school some 35 years ago so I know the State of the Art is waaaay over there somewhere now, and here I am still playing with my mercury cuprate stuff.
Anyway.
You have a car. It's similar to my car. It has a 200bhp engine, weighs about two tonnes, and tops out at about 100mph. How would you make that a 200mph car?
Well, you'd need more energy, for a start, but E=1/2mv^2 turns into sqrt(2E/m) right, so you need four times as much power for twice the speed. This is okay. You're not getting 800bhp out of the engine you have now but it's doable. You can buy cars with 800bhp engines, these days maybe you'd be looking at some electric motor.
But you're still not doing 200mph because the drag increases as the square of the speed too, so you'd actually need 1600bhp to get to 200mph, which is still doable but opens up even more problems because now everything needs to be heavier to cope with the power.
So all else being the same you're actually onto about 2400bhp or so before you crack 200mph.
Which you achieve just as you either run out of road, or more likely petrol, at £1.50 a litre, so you're not taking too many attempts at it.
Anyway, the tl;dr - it's not just one thing that's stopping you getting that transition point higher, it's a bunch of stuff that interacts in weird ways.
Its not at all clear that room temperature superconductors are impossible, it's a materials problem. If someone was to find one that is probably how they would do it - testing materials for some other property and finding it accidentally.
Room temperature is totally possible. Room temperature AND room pressure is another story. Superconductivity acrose a couple nanometers inside a diamond anvil is not very useful even if at "room" temperatures.
Oh god, wow. It's obviously impossible? Please please please write a paper on that, you can save so much scientist time!
We need followup post exactly 365 days later describing first karting accident inside CERN
CERN Research Facility, Geneva. Subject: Gordon Freeman, Male, Age 27
Gérard Hommelibre?
Bonjour, and bienvenue to the Black Mesa - pardon, la Mesa Noire - Établissement de Recherche. Please keep your hands inside le tramway at all times, and do try not to provoquer une cascade de résonance. Merci.
Tired: particle accelerator which crosses the border between France and Switzerland.
Wired: particle accelerator which crosses the border between Quebec and Ontario.
I would pay stupid money for a CERN Tunnel Rainbow Road track DLC.
How about for a real life Rainbow Road made by the Quantum Mushroom startup? I think that might be the aerospace applications reference in the article:
> CERN’s Knowledge Transfer Group has begun discussions with European startup company Quantum Mushroom to explore aerospace applications and powering for next-generation anti-gravity vehicles.
> How about for a real life Rainbow Road made by the Quantum Mushroom startup?
I once drove on a rainbow road after using some mushroom products. Do not recommend.
Happy April Fools Day!
As Alumni, the tables outside R1 are prime for getting ideas, with some help from fermented barley, especially after work during Summertime.
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This is the day upon which we are reminded of what we are on the other three hundred and sixty-four.
-- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"
This is an old internet tradition. I am disappointed so few organizations are doing a good april fools day post nowadays.
Mario Idraulico and Luigi Fratello overseeing this project? I hope the karts don't run into any stray kooparticles.
I really miss Think Geek :-(
When they later actually sold the t-shirt they had previously presented as an April Fools joke? That was pretty cool.
I still had a Timmy the Monkey sticker on the lid of my kitchen bin up until a couple of years ago.
I'd be cautious of residual Higgs Booson particles in the tunnels. They can cause unexpected phase shifts if encountered, which may expose the driver to unexpected hazards.
The observer effect prevents Booson particles from traveling towards the observer
Ah, the stages of a good April Fool's nerd joke:
1, Reading the Headline on HN) "Man, this is probably going to be something more practical, but I wish they were superconducting go-karts or golf-carts to get around the facility in."
2, Reading the article) "...okay, I was right? Kinda? Huh. Something feels off. Wait a-"
3, Remembering the Date) "FUCK. OK, CERN got me. Good one. Still want a superconducting kart though."
Really enjoyed the "karts and equipment will reach underground areas via giant green pipes" caption on the LHC tunnel diagram.
As an homage, Supertuxkart might add a CERN-LHC inspired level with a wormhole as a secret path.
It took me a while to notice the first april, but actually the image was too unbelievable. But if such karts were possible, I bet the guys at CERN would absolutely use it. And then post on youtube.
We know how things happen in "professional research".
high temperature super conductors my beloved
oh my, I should really visit one day, I'm not even that far from CERN
They do some good tours. They are first come/first serve, so show up in the morning for the best chance to get a place.
Right on time! "The Super Mario Galaxy Movie" released today.
> Each kart is turbo-boosted by 64 superconducting engines,” explains project leader Mario Idraulico
I guess we can now call you Mario 'Kart' Idraulico.
Oh wait.
Thank you CERN, that was a smart one.
Since I didn't get the name reference either, here is a link for those who want a hint: https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idraulico
Nice, I didn't get it.
I just realized "Kyouryuu" is Japanese for dinosaur.
And Pfirsich is of course Peach.
They missed a perfect spot to mention something about "Gordon".
(Half-Life joke)
Mario Idraulico says „mamma mia, they’re super”. Gosh I love April.
Ofcourse the guy explaining the carts is called "Mario".
if you reached c with such a cart - nevermind the heat from air friction, would you be able to breath from a rebreather?
Call me a killjoy I hate April fools jokes.
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Please bro. Just one more particle collider. This one will solve science. The last one wasn’t big enough. Please keep it in desirable real estate though.
Each bigger one has in fact solved more of physics, after being built precisely because there was a good theoretical case for a higher energy collider being helpful.
I’m ignorant. It’s a meme about their optics being terrible after steam ran out for 90s science optimism.
As somebody slightly better informed (physics degree, following popular science): It really isn't looking great for something that could be found at a small multiple of current energies, but not at current energies.
Is this an april fools joke? The title image looks so over-the-top that I really can't tell if it's a joke or not
No of course not, they have Mario guys running around in karts doing maintenance of hyper complex system with wrenches. No physics can resist Mario's wrench, thats how we move humanity forward
Meh joke considering this was paid on public money.
Same as choosing to spend xxx,xxx USD to have .cern when using subdomains would have worked too (and caused less validation / compatibility issues).
They got the intern to write a funny post. Probably took them an hour and it drums up a bit of good press for the Hi-Lumi LHC.
Money well spent if you ask me.
The Web is a side project of CERN, they should have gotten a comped top-level domain by rights.
This page cost taxpayers like 100 Euros maybe. How much money do you think scientists actually make? How much money and effort do you think it takes to post a blog article with a couple paragraphs of text and an image?