as the most Y2K image in existence.
I can't find an exact date for this photo, but given the timeline of the Gravity Probe B mission it must have been taken in the late 90s, before this quartz sphere and its three siblings were coated in niobium and installed into the probe to serve as superconductive levitating gyroscopes. They remain the four most perfect spheres ever made1 in service of building a satellite with motion so predictable and quantifiable that minute changes in the satellite's observation of a reference star could be used to verify general relativity. As the satellite's helium coolant has long since run I out, I would like three of you to join me on a salvage mission where we get up there, crack open the shell of the dewar, and heist the four spheres--to be split evenly amongst ourselves, of course, as none of us would ever imagine betraying the others. Of course.
1There was an Australian project a few years ago to engineer silicon spheres as part of an attempt to better define the kilogram, but if my math is right their spheres are about 25% less perfect than the GP-B spheres. Still, I suppose they are the most perfect spheres on Earth.