Scientists at the Department of Energy’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory announced today (February 10) a series of special tours that will be given on Sunday afternoon, February 23. The two-hour tours will take visitors from the viewing area of Fermilab’s Wilson Hall to a particle-physics experiment called the Collider Detector at Fermilab. Scientists will be on hand to answer questions, and refreshments will be served.
Physicists use the CDF experiment to observe and analyze the building blocks of the universe. The CDF detector records particles emerging from proton-antiproton collisions produced by Fermilab’s Tevatron accelerator, the world’s most powerful particle accelerator. Each second, more than one million collisions take place at the center of the CDF detector. In 1995, CDF physicists and their colleagues of the DZero experiment discovered the top quark, the heaviest building block ever observed.
The first two-hour tour begins on Sunday, February 23, at 1 p.m., and additional tours leave every half an hour. The tours are free of charge. Participation is limited. Visitors need to call 630-840-5588 to register. The minimum age for participation is 10 years.
Fermilab is a national laboratory funded by the Office of Science of the U.S. Department of Energy, operated by Universities Research Association, Inc.