As the engineering technician at the LIGO lab, Myron MacInnis builds the contraptions that let researchers search for clues about the makeup of the universe.

This article first appeared in Technology Review: MIT News in February 2012

Myron MacInnis squats on the floor of the LIGO laboratory in Building NW17 and peers under one of the thick blue beams that surround and support chambers resembling giant tin canisters. Other members of the LIGO lab surround him, pondering the flashlight-illuminated underbelly of this blue beast.

Bright red and yellow scaffolding crisscrosses the ceiling of the lab, called the High Bay. Clumps of enormous chains dangle from it to hold a silver beam that makes up another part of the support structure. As MacInnis and crew puzzle over how tightly they should screw in the blue beams’ support plates, he suggests in his born-and-bred Massachusetts accent that they “torque the shit out of it.”…