Recently we flew into Albuquerque, NM, and then took I-40 to the Barringer Meteor Crater southwest of Winslow, AZ, and 5 1/2 miles south of I-40. This was a bucket list trip for me but maybe not so much for my long-suffering spouse. I’ll spare the reader of all of the obligatory selfies.

The meteor hit the AZ location 50,000 years ago and blasted a crater out of the local sandstone. The fellow who first bought the site, Barringer, believed that iron remnants of the meteor were buried within the crater, so he obtained the site by filing mining claims in 1903 that included the crater. He dug a 200 ft mineshaft into the center and drilled exploratory holes hoping to strike a rich lode of iron. Sadly for him, he found only sandstone. In fact, the fragmented remains of the meteor are scattered over the surrounding landscape. Daniel M. Barringer, a mining engineer and businessman, who bought the mining claims believed the crater was due to a meteor impact. It was many years later that professional opinions agreed that the crater was meteoric in origin. The Crater has been in in the hands of the Barringer family from the beginning.

I thought this was amusing at first glance, seemingly warning that the Meteor Crater was out of order, but it was just for the water fountain. The visitor’s center has a large gift shop and an auditorium for a short video of the site and its history. The only path to the crater is through the visitor’s center. It is all private property.

The second big hole in Arizona is a whopper located north of Flagstaff. It is the Grand Canyon, of course. I had scheduled a helicopter tour of the canyon with Maverick Helicopter. at the Grand Canyon National Park Airport. They have 5 gleaming Airbus H130 helicopters that can carry 6 passengers each. Everyone gets headphones to speak in the noisy choppers.

Everybody has seen countless photos with all of the breathless descriptions of the canyon, and yes, it is definitely Grand. We took a ground tour with Pink Jeep Tours in one of their custom pink Jeeps. This was in the fall shoulder season for tourism so the crowds were manageable. Gawping at it from the rim was nice but to have a real canyon experience I think you have to go into the canyon.

Note: Some of the VLA pictures are duplicated from a recent post.

Once we completed our tour of Arizona’s two gaping holes, we pointed the car east and drove to the Very Large Array (VLA) near Magdalena, NM. They put on an open house for the public on Oct. 11, so I was obligated to grab another bucket list trip. Again, the spouse unit was luke-warm but I was impressed.

One of the 27 dishes is in the shop and 26 are in the field.

It takes the dish transport machine two weeks to reposition all 26 VLA dishes. The rails were installed to be rated for highspeed rail operations. This rating evidently ensures that dish transport is as smooth as possible.

One of the side effects of my 5 years of community theater experience on top of my beta-blocker high blood pressure meds has been that I tend not to get stage fright. I am likely to say things thar ordinarily I might not say. Beta-blockers have been successfully used to suppress the anxiety of stage fright. It works. The young radio astronomer tour guide kept referring to black holes in his spiel. Tired of this patronizing whizbang black hoIe talk, I asked him if it was possible for an astronomer to not mention black holes while speaking. He said he didn’t know. The younger VLA astronomers in the group were greatly amused by this blunt question.

When asked about the sensitivity of the VLA radio telescope system, the guide said that if you were out at the orbit of Pluto and used your cell phone, you would be the brightest radio object in the sky. Yikes.

A year ago atop Mauna Kea on the Island of Hawai’i we saw these radio telescopes. The photo does not show the howling, frigid wind. It was dang cold.

After VLA we left for Albuquerque 2 hours to the north. The next day while waiting for our flight, we visited the National Museum of Nuclear Science & History. There was a similar museum in Las Vegas, but a bit smaller. This museum was packed with artifacts from the early nuclear age.

At the time of the Manhattan Project, not much was known about the range of hazards of radiation exposure and dosing. And this may have been especially true for neutron exposure. Neutron activation was known, but the physiological consequences were poorly understood. Large doses of radiation correlates well with physiological effects, but in the low dose range, it begins to be sketchy. Radiation dosing tends to be stochastic in its effects.

On my 50th birthday I actually went uranium prospecting near Idaho Springs, CO. I had a tip that pitchblende had been spotted nearby. All I managed to do was contaminate the Geiger counter with natural radioactive material that spoiled the calibration of the counter. Pisser.

A mockup of the top end of an ICBM with numerous MIRVs, Multiple Independently-targetable Reentry Vehicles.

Alert!! I spotted a Radio Shack store driving through Socorro. Driving by I could see shelves inside- it looked open for business. It was like spotting a wooly mammoth or a Dodo bird. I spent a lot of money at Radio Shack while in high school in the ’70s.