View from the 2nd Street light rail train stop at night.
2nd Street Light Rail Stop
Tree and Sky
Rock on a Hill
Looking east over south San Jose. I imagine this rock being a meeting place for thousands of years. Meet for a picnic, meet for a date, meet to chat while the kids play. It looks like it is calling out to have people meet around it.
Tree on a Hill
Screen
Up close to a two story tall video screen in a lobby.
Hike with the Clouds
These photos were taken on a calming hike in the Rancho San Vicente Open Space Preserve, one part of Calero, a Santa Clara County Park. This is in the rural area of south San Jose. The photo above is looking north towards the more populated urban areas of the city off in the distance.
Morning Decor
Guadalupe Creek Trail
Looking east towards the Diablo Mountain Range from the Guadalupe Creek Trail in San Jose as the sun goes down behind us. Actually, as the sun falls back behind us in our travels. Standing here, in San Jose, looking east, we are traveling at 825 miles per hour towards that sky just beyond the horizon. The sky, stars, and sun all flying by as we spin around the earth’s axis. I imagine it like we are in a convertible going straight ahead to the east and the sky above is flying towards us and over us, then lost behind us over that west horizon until we complete our circle and come back around to here in 24 hours. Want to know how fast you are traveling when you stand in the place where you are? You can find out by reading this linked page of this website.
Palm Tree and Clouds
SLAC – Longest Linear Accelerator
Looking down the hall of the 2 mile long straight building at Stanford’s linear accelerator. Straight, not level. The guide said if it was level it would follow the Earth’s curve and at 2 miles long it would then be about 12 inches off of straight at the end. This building was designed to be straight because a couple of stories below ground, under this support equipment that the building is housing, is a long tube that is designed to accelerate particles very near the speed of light. And those particles go straight. You don’t get too many opportunities to look down so perfect an example of a diminishing perspective through distance.
This is the outside of the building, looking down the exact same stretch as seen in the inside photo above it. You can see highway 280 going over the linear accelerator as a bridge not too far ahead in the photo.
Our tour guide took us to a newer building added down the end of the accelerator where x-rays generated by the accelerated particles are used for modern research. The accelerator was running throughout this whole visit, and does so through most hours of most days of the year. And so, behind the tour guide in the above photo, here a few stories under ground, x-rays are flying through the labs in a horizontal tube that I pointed out with the added blue arrow. These x-rays are used in the various experiments going on in the numerous rooms of SLAC.
There is something wonderful about humans working together on huge ambitious projects to advance our understanding of the universe. And it is pretty great to get to look at these projects and to consider what they do and how they do it.
Coming back up to the surface, surrounded by California.