Tenacious persistence
Fermilab’s Liz Sexton-Kennedy talks to Symmetry about her lifelong drive to learn and how it led to her current role as chief information officer for Fermilab. Jim Daley spoke to Sexton-Kennedy about her experiences in STEM, her career at Fermilab and a bit about herself.
Fermilab is America’s particle physics and accelerator laboratory. Our vision is to solve the mysteries of matter, energy, space and time for the benefit of all.
Patricia McBride recognized with Carnegie Mellon University Alumni Award
Recipients of the award have made an impact on their industries, their communities, their alma mater and lives around the world. McBride is one of this year’s 11 CMU Alumni Award recipients. CMU will celebrate the honorees’ achievements and service during CMU’s commencement weekend in May.
Shekhar Mishra receives 2019 Pravasi Bharatiya Samman Award
The Samman Award is the highest honor conferred on an overseas Indian. Fermilab scientist Mishra received this award from President of India Ram Nath Kovind.
CSI: Neutrinos cast no shadows
The MINERvA neutrino experiment has a new crime scene investigation technique, one that takes a hard look at the traces that particles leave before fleeing the scene. Researchers used a new technique in a recent MINERvA neutrino investigation. And the new insights they gained on the workings of nuclear effects can help other neutrino experiments.
ArgoNeuT hits a home run with measurements of neutrinos in liquid argon
Scientists on the ArgoNeuT experiment have developed a method that enables them to better distinguish the tracks that particles leave behind in liquid argon, as well as a way to better differentiate between signals and background. And thanks to the software’s great performance, ArgoNeuT will aid larger neutrino experiments in their quest to understand the nature of the subtle neutrino.
Retired equipment lives on in new physics experiments
Physicists often find thrifty, ingenious ways to reuse equipment and resources. What do you do about an 800-ton magnet originally used to discover new particles? Send it off on a months-long journey via truck, train and ship halfway across the world to detect oscillating particles called neutrinos, of course. It’s all part of the vast recycling network of the physics community.
Fermilab in the news
From FAPESP, Feb. 13, 2019: Uma parte vital de um dos maiores experimentos da física de partículas atual foi desenvolvida no Brasil. O Arapuca é um detector de luz a ser instalado no Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment — projeto que busca descobrir novas propriedades dos neutrinos, partícula elementar com muito pouca massa e que viaja a uma velocidade muito próxima à da luz.
From Aurora Beacon-News, Fermilab scientists and engineers are hoping to understand neutrinos — tiny particles that many feel hold the key to answering many questions about the universe — and are using a very large thermometer to do it.
From 365 Days of Astronomy, Feb. 9, 2019: In this podcast, The Dark Energy Survey started in 2013 to map dark energy over 5000 square degrees of sky. Writer and poet Amy Catanzano visited Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory during the Dark Energy Survey. In this podcast, Amy discusses her work in quantum poetics, her experience with the Dark Energy Survey and shares some of her poetry.