The discovery of the muon originally confounded physicists. Today international experiments are using the previously perplexing particle to gain a new understanding of our world.
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We know that neutrinos aren’t massless, they’re just incredibly light — a million times lighter than the next lightest particle, the electron. And they don’t seem to get their mass in the same way as other particles in the Standard Model.
An international team of theoretical physicists have published their calculation of the anomalous magnetic moment of the muon. Their work expands on a simple yet richly descriptive equation that revolutionized physics almost a century ago and that may aid scientists in the discovery of physics beyond the Standard Model. Now the world awaits the result from the Fermilab Muon g-2 experiment.
From Scientific American, June 9, 2020: Dark matter researchers are reassessing theories about how dark matter particles lighter than a proton might appear in their detectors. In a recent paper, Fermilab scientists Noah Kurinsky and Gordan Krnjaic propose that a detector could find plasmons — aggregates of electrons moving together in a material — produced by dark matter.
Engineers from five countries are coordinating the design of the large cryomodules that will enable the new PIP-II accelerator at Fermilab to generate protons for the world’s most powerful beam of neutrinos, in support of the international Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment.
From DOE, June 4, 2020: The U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Technology Transitions has announced new resources for innovators to combat COVID-19 through its Lab Partnering Service and the COVID-19 Technical Assistance Program. These initiatives will allow America’s innovators to readily access vital resources and connect and partner with experts at DOE’s 17 national laboratories in the fight against the virus.
Quantum computing will affect the future of every area of science, creating the need for a quantum-fluent workforce. In collaboration with two high school teachers, a group of Fermilab theorists has developed a quantum computing course for high school students. With this course, Fermilab scientists are breaking new ground in both quantum computing research and supporting the competitiveness of the STEM workforce in the quantum era.
A good dark matter detector has a lot in common with a good teleconference setup: You need a sensitive microphone and a quiet room. The SENSEI experiment has demonstrated world-leading sensitivity and the low background needed for an effective search for low-mass dark matter.
From The Great Courses Daily, June 2, 2020: Fermilab scientist Don Lincoln writes about modern science: how it is a process for fitting facts into some interconnected whole, for a bigger picture, why it’s an extremely powerful tool and the different terms for the meaning of basic scientific methods.
From Physics Today, June 1, 2020: Somewhere in the laws of physics, particles must be allowed to behave differently from their antiparticles. If they weren’t, the universe would contain equal amounts of matter and antimatter, all the particles and antiparticles would promptly annihilate one another, and none of us would exist. Fermilab’s NOvA neutrino experiment and the international Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment, hosted by Fermilab, are pinning down CP violation, the property that could explain the imbalance.