The late Harold DuBose of Spectra-Physics, repeatedly used 555's as power inverters in the electronic design of a frequency stabilized ring dye laser. He liked the strength of the output transistor.
In Israel, virtually every Christian relic is fake. Some are hundreds of years old, but nevertheless fake. This is not a comment on Christianity as a religion. Religions need relics, and if they can’t find them, they are created. This is operating in modern times. I was working as a contractor for Intel Israel. They took everybody on a day trip. To an LDS temple to “see the organ” (what else?). An American LDS church. Needed a place in Israel to “represent.” Now wait 100 years. You wait. I have things to do.
Older relics can be tested, but the Catholic church won't really allow it, e.g. San Gennaro's blood in Naples is a flask of red clotted liquid which melts during some ceremonies, and is quite likely not blood at all. But there's a massive community of believers and thus it will not be challenged by the church.
For more modern miracles and relics the church does have a tight grip, and famously one pope threw a whole bag of Christ teeth in the Tiber river, but many older things have been "grandfathered".
DNA tested for what, exactly? I guess things like fragmentary remains may not be human, but a full skull is not so easy to confuse for a donkey. Ethnicity would only be useful if the saint in question had origins that would be out of place in Italy or if they had a specific ethnicity(like St Peter's remains not having a Levantine origin).
Yes well there are other things you could do with a DNA genotype than tag ethnicity or confirm it's human. Specifically related to a similarity metric between genotypes (which is how we go about arriving at an ethnicity estimate)
For example
if said saint has any known living relatives (and we are certain of that), then this confirms the veracity of the relic.
if said saint has multiple relics of various body parts, we DNA test each one and examine concordance.
of course a DNA test may QC fail, not enough DNA, too low quality, etc. But if it passes then we potentially have dead to rights a confirmation or refutation of the relic. For this reason I expect the church would be quite recalcitrant to have it tested, because there is a possible outcome that the relic is revealed to be a fake
Relics are only a way of advertising the religion.
We should ban advertisements of religions. If their gods are so powerful then they shouldn't need advertising. And if you are a believer AND god turns out to be real then banning advertising could lead to the return of Jesus. Win win.
Imagine you have no religion, but are feeling spiritual and want to find something real. Do you go to the church of a religion that claims it has the actual remains of their saints, or the one that only has pictures and empty walls?
Actually, maybe that's a stupid question as people absolutely do both. But there is an element of "look how great we are because we have a splinter from the holy cross in our church".
I don't really think I got your point. All "evidence" that the bones in location X are really those of St. Y, won't have any effect on you, when you don't care about St. Y at all, because you don't believe in that religion.
All good advice above. I’ve tapped 1000’s of holes and haven’t broken a tap in 50 years, and I have nothing to add to the above. Berkeley Physics Dept. student machine shop training.
Try buying a compact Toyota pickup without the extra row of seats. The last one was made in 2015. They sell for more than the price of new for mileage < 100k.
I’m an optomechanical engineer and I’m sorry. I’m not impressed. In a Michelson, the single most important requirement is that the optical path lengths of the two arms do not drift with respect to each other, either in length or angle. Having that path length determined by a fused deposition polymer is about the LAST choice I would make. I have a suggestion. Fused quartz rods are relatively cheap. Buy some 6mm rods and a thin diamond blade to cut them to size. Use the 3D printer to make plate-like parts, ‘replicating’ a cage structure. The polymer parts should be used only for components PERPENDICULAR to the optical path. You could even experiment with using embedded rods to stabilize the plates in various directions. So much of hobbyist activity amounts to a kind of adult coloring or copying. Rather, at your own level, try to be a scientist.
I have found that my best designs, few and far between, enter a period where they get simpler as they are completed. And my worst or failed designs keep getting more complex as I go on.
"Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius — and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction."
