Fermilab scientists to explain what will happen on September 10
Batavia, Ill. – To answer reporters’ questions about the upcoming startup of the Large Hadron Collider and what it means for research at the Tevatron collider, the Department of Energy’s Fermilab offers a 2-hour Q&A session with Fermilab scientists on Thursday, Sept. 4, from 10:00 a.m. to noon in Wilson Hall. Reporters also will obtain a tour of the LHC Remote Operations Center at Fermilab.
A few days later, on Sept. 10, Fermilab will host a “First-beam Pajama Party” for scientists, guests and media representatives to celebrate the startup of the LHC in real time, at 1:30 a.m. CDT.
At the Q&A session on Sept. 4, four scientists will be on hand to answer in laymen’s terms such questions as “What does the startup mean for the future of Fermilab?”, “How does the LHC startup compare to the Tevatron startup in 1983?” and “Why do scientists build larger and larger accelerators?” The scientists are Peter Limon, who was instrumental in initiating U.S. participation in the LHC construction and who spent 22 months at CERN helping with its installation and commissioning; Dan Green, who’s led the U.S. participation in the construction of the CMS experiment at the LHC; Roger Dixon, who worked on the construction of the Fermilab Tevatron as a staff member and today is the head of the Fermilab Accelerator Division; and Joe Lykken, who has published scientific papers on extra dimensions and other phenomena that the LHC could discover.
The Large Hadron Collider, about 17 miles in circumference, is the largest scientific instrument ever constructed. On Sept. 10, scientists in Geneva, Switzerland, will attempt for the first time to send a proton beam around the ring. More than 1,700 scientists in the United States participate in one of the LHC experiments. The Department of Energy and the National Science
Foundation have contributed a total of $531 million to the construction of the CMS and ATLAS detectors and the LHC machine over twelve years.
Reporters planning to attend the Q&A session on Sept. 4 should send an email to Kurt Riesselmann, kurtr@fnal.gov, or call 630-840-5681.
Reporters planning to attend the First-Beam Pajama Party at Fermilab should call the Fermilab Office of Communication at 630-840-2326 or e-mail Elizabeth Clements at lizzie@fnal.gov.
The Fermi Research Alliance LLC operates Fermilab under a contract with the U.S. Department of Energy.