The Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment will tackle some of the biggest mysteries in physics — and to do so, it will need the most intense high-energy beam of neutrinos ever created. Engineers are up to the complicated task, which will need extreme versions of some common-sounding ingredients: magnets and pencil lead.

Researchers are wielding quantum physics, technologies and expertise to develop a proposed Illinois Express Quantum Network, which would stretch between Fermilab and Northwestern University’s Evanston and Chicago campuses. The metropolitan-scale, quantum-classical hybrid design combines quantum technologies with existing classical networks to create a multinode system for multiple users.

From Northwestern University, Nov. 8, 2019: Northwestern and Fermilab researchers, including Fermilab scientists Anna Grassellino and Alexander Romanenko, show how impurities can increase the maximum accelerating field of superconducting radio-frequency cavities, a finding with huge potential cost advantages.

Scientists who moved from particle physics or astrophysics to medical physics sit down with Symmetry to talk about life, science and career changes.

Site preparation work starts at Fermilab this fall for the international Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment. Contractors will begin site prep where the powerful particle beam will be extracted and sent toward its final destination in South Dakota.

From Gizmodo, Nov. 6, 2019: Scientists analyzing data from a defunct satellite say we should all consider that our universe might be round, rather than flat. The consequences, they explain in a new paper, could be crisis-inducing. Fermilab scientist Dan Hooper weighs in on this tension in cosmology.

When the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope high in the Chilean Andes becomes fully operational in 2022, its 3.2-gigapixel camera will collect the same amount of data — every night. And it will do so over and over again for ten years. The sky survey will collect so much data that data scientists needed to figure out new ways for astronomers to access it.

Fermilab’s NOvA neutrino experiment records in its giant particle detector the passage of slippery particles called neutrinos and their antimatter counterparts, antineutrinos. Famously elusive, these particles’ interactions are challenging to capture, requiring the steady accumulation of interaction data to be able to pin down their characteristics. With five years’ worth of data, NOvA is adding to scientists’ understanding of neutrinos’ mass and oscillation behavior.

From University of Virginia, Nov. 4, 2019: University of Virginia physicists are building major components for one of the largest and most complex physics experiments ever conducted in the United States: a $271 million particle physics project at Fermilab called the Muon-to-electron Conversion Experiment, or Mu2e.

From CERN, Nov. 6, 2019: The CERN Council has selected Fabiola Gianotti as the organization’s next director-general, her second term of office. The appointment will be formalized at the December session of the Council, and Gianotti’s new five-year term of office will begin on Jan. 1, 2021. This is the first time in CERN’s history that a director-general has been appointed for a full second term.