What is it??

Its an Orc disco ball. Them sub humans tend to party rather hard at times.

It's an aluminum whiffle ball.

The sphere in the photo sure does not look like it has a mass of nearly 850 lbs. Perhaps it is a scale test model?

When did you last pick up a chunk of Wolfram? I assure you, it's bl**dy heavy!

Yeah but bl**dy is an imperial unit..
What's the metric equivalent?

Del
BTW
Nice bit on have I got News For You Last Night about the probs getting the Irish town of 'Effin' to be accepted by the internet! It keeps getting Effin censored.

This is the advantage of universal units, such as -40°C = -40°F, and c_xxx hairs, although the latter requires exponential notation....

Yup

C*** Hairs are compliant to universal ISO standards

Proved by the fact you're american , i am in australia , and we both know with absolute clarity that a C*** hair = 0.0075 mm or 3 thou of an inch

and i heard a rumour it will be included in the 30th edition of Machinery Handbook.

Blimy that's old news! It was all over Radio 4 last week. They can't even get the fan page "Get our village Effin recognised by Facebook" registered"

I think it's hilarious that they thought they might. They should have been far more sneaky in getting a fan page up and running.

Way back when the ol' profanity software started, no-one from Scunthorpe could register their home town on the interweb....

Yes it's old news, but have you noticed these days the real News is full of supposition and prediction about what's going to happen, usually by 'experts' (who failed to spot the previous events).
Del
regarding Scunthorpe..
I was told by an Entymologist friend it started with the good ol' Typoo tea advert "Typhoo put the Tea in Britain"
Resulting in
"If Typhoo put the T in Britain...
Who put the .... in Scunthorpe"

They could have used the Irish spelling Eifinn instead of Effin.

Oh no argument there. When you compare the sizes of the conductors shown in the photo to the size of the sphere, the sphere does not look large enough to me to represent a mass of the reported weight.

Why you didn't put the LINK to the rest of the pictures? Original poster should have saved the photo to his hard drive and renamed it before uploading to his post. By leaving the original 'properties' to it anybody can right-click on the photo and see where it came from.

That's why I said to guess, before searching...the honor system

Now that I look; your embedded info can easily lead to what it is. But, "what is this device used for?" is the really the 'hard to guess' question.

I.e. don't let the AP whining put you off.

OP

engineers among you check out the photos

see the second last photo shows a white frame about 25 mm in depth and 1700 mm across roughly

now check out all the weight of equipment sitting on top of it and tell me how much G force the rocket will create on launch... bet its not 1.000001 G

looks a little unsupported to me

someone ask them for the calcs on the gyroscope gymble shafts and bearings too while you're at it . doesnt it pack a heap of mass inside ?

those shafts look a bit light to cope with 3 - 5 G at launch.

maybe it has a transit support that supports the ball during launch and then drops down when its in use

Some of us stay up on our space news a little more than others...don't be hatin' Anonymous EtherPerson

Part of a star projector for a planetarium. (?)

R2D2's love interest

Detonator for a Nuke???

Maybe a setup fixture to set the pattern when drilling the holes in bowling balls.

yeah

what he said

Gyro for avionics / missile / satellite / R2D2 sex toy

actually i call that about $ 150,000 plus of machining contract

i wish to offer my services to manufacture 1000 more like it at a 10 % discount

If you zoom in the red labels attached to several cables do indeed say "REMOVE BEFORE FLIGHT" so it must be something to do with either and aircraft, spacecraft or rocket.

Laser Gyro.

Albert Einstein's bowling ball, Relatively speaking.

I think AussieBob has picked it because it certainly looks very much like the satellite portion of LARS as shown in the image bellow.

I agree but give cuba pete credit. He identified this first as LARES.

Apologies Pete I missed your post, probably because you didn't elaborate, but you did get there first.

Hubble telescope camera housing?

A full panoramic camera to provide spherical surround.

Like this one?

Wow, that's cool....Would be nice to have a sort of helium balloon ball setup for shooting movies...

Well, if it was a Russian satellite it would be a billion ruble disaster.

for measuring this

H-Bomb?

Its the modern version of the Barnes Wallis' bouncing bomb.

The flying practice bot that Luke Skywalker used to train with to learn the light saber in one of the Star Wars movies.

Yoda's personal trainer???

No idea what it is but i am sure that one sitting on the coffee table would be a great conversation starter.

BAB.

ET's golf ball.

Damn, now what did Scotty call it? I'm sure I saw it in the last Star Trek film!

Don't know, but must have something to do with magnetism.

It must be a submersible globe to view ocean floor.

Discotheque ball stripped for maintenance....., but then, what is it ??

Advanced coffee grinder.

(May be swayed by lack of coffee)

Something to tease PlbMak with.

At last! The return of the Friday Picture Quizzes!

A wim-wam for an Ouzalin bird. Duh. Stayt of ejucashun thees daze.

its actually an exercise wheel for a mouse but the CIA is using it for black propaganda to make the chinese and russians spend money trying to reverse engineer the thing

American attempt to recreate the Chinese balls within balls within boxes artifacts from the 12th century....

Anyone for Quidditch?

Haha, nice one, I think it's a pop corn machine.

Pop carrot... ?

Hmmm, plenty of Iron!

A new mousetrap!

... but is it better?

Clearly an upscale condo for chickadees.

If they don't sell , it can always be hung (with a bit of ingenuity/engineering panache*) on that tree in Rockefeller Center....

* (_{cuz it IS rather heavier than them other or-nee-mints})

The Flux Capacitor for Doc Emmet Brown's DeLorien?

Looks like the CNC machine had a malfunction......

LOL

Sure some think its LARES, but its actually a new camera device made by Playboy for full imaging capabilities.

Internally?

Actually externaly ......the Matrix.....effect.................

What Matrix effect? Yes I've seen 2/3, but I can't even care remember whether it's the red pill or the blue pill....

Films = 90-120 mins of brain-off fun, which are not written to long term memory to avoid overload....

OK.................um Just wow

It's one half of a matching pair.

IM = IM-2T Iron Man over air = Iron Man - 2T

air

.

Conversely

air = IM+2t

IM

As can be clearly seen in this proof and as indicated by the attached signage, to achieve flight they must be removed first.

For futher details log on to Ironman.com

Whu?

My sincere apologies John

There are two things that you need to be aware of.

1) I am not always as serious as I should be, on this, a technical forum.

2) Iron Man is a fictional character that was developed at Marvel Comics and is not a real individual.

Iron man over air, is Iron Man flying.

Air over Iron Man, is Iron Man on the ground.

T = Testicle

So as you can see the proof makes perfect sense. Iron Man over air is equal to Iron Man minus 2T.

I tender this further evidence.

Iron man was not at all pleased when informed by Pepper ( his assistant) that the twins had to stay on the ground when he flew off to do hid good deeds. Pepper explained that 1720 lbs. of unslung weight would throw the flight characteristics of the suit right out the window. She also pointed out that at a high speed run on the ground he was begining to whistle, and at high speed flight he would quite likely scream like a banshee. This would of course frighten the children and confuse the birds.

Please don't show this to Iron Man, as he would likely fly north from Holywood and kick the crap out of me for disclosing such information.

Have a good Holiday John.

Elroy Out (and under the desk).

Does that mean you lose yer bollocks when you fly, or if you lose yer bollocks you fly?^[1]

Signed Confused, of normalspacetime.

[1] All this is assumed to be in Iron Man space - I've flown a good many times, and AFAIK they're still in the correct place. I have not the slightest intention of castrating myself to see if it makes me fly.

but its only 2T minus 1 ?

its a small sacrifice to pay for levitation

do you know my psychic powers are so immense i can make birds levitate just by clapping my hands.