Andre Salles is a science writer at Argonne National Laboratory and former senior writer in the Fermilab Office of Communication.
It survived a month-long journey over 3,200 miles, and now the delicate and complex electromagnet is well on its way to exploring the unknown. The Muon g-2 ring has successfully cooled down to operating temperature and powered up, proving that even after a decade of inactivity, it remains a vital and viable scientific instrument.
Artist Lindsay Olson presents examples of her work to the Fermilab Art Gallery Committee earlier this year. Photo: Georgia Schwender, OC As curator of the Fermilab Art Gallery, Georgia Schwender is always looking for new ways to connect the worlds of art and science. With the launch of the laboratory’s first artist-in-residence program, she’s hoping to bring those worlds as close together as she can. For the next 12 months, Fermilab will welcome Oak Park artist Lindsay Olson behind the…
A small-business owner raises a question at last week’s Argonne-Fermilab small-business fair. Photo: Wes Agresta, Argonne National Laboratory What do you call more than 150 local small-business representatives in one room, forging connections with two national laboratories? If you’re the organizers of the “Doing Business with Argonne and Fermi National Laboratories” small-business fair, you call it a good start. On Thursday, Aug. 28, Illinois’ two national laboratories — Argonne and Fermi national laboratories — joined forces for the second year…
P5 Committee Chair Steve Ritz, left, addresses a question from the audience at the 2014 Users Meeting on Wednesday. Photo: Reidar Hahn More than 500 scientists gathered at Fermilab for last week’s Users Meeting. Among the highlights was a question-and-answer session on the recently released report from the Particle Physics Project Prioritization Panel. Steve Ritz of the University of California, Santa Cruz, walked the audience through the P5 report. Ritz chaired the P5 committee. The report will be used as…
Scientist and intern fall in love in a play set at Fermilab. Photo courtesy of Village Theatre Guild Lisa Dolnics says she wasn’t thrilled at first with the idea of “now then again,” a romantic play set in the halls of Fermilab. But once she read it, she fell in love, much like the play’s two protagonists. She enjoyed it so much, in fact, that she asked to direct it. Dolnics’ production of “now then again” with the Village Theatre…
Teacher Amy Truemper of Bednarcik Junior High School in Oswego brought this group of eighth graders to the Saturday showing of Particle Fever in Naperville. The students stayed after the film to ask incisive questions of the panel of Fermilab and Argonne scientists, moderated by Andre Salles. Photo courtesy Amy Truemper “Particle Fever,” the documentary about the Large Hadron Collider and the hunt for the Higgs boson, opened at the Music Box Theatre in Chicago and at the AMC Showplace…
Kids enjoy a science demonstration at Fermilab’s Family Open House. Photo: Cindy Arnold Part of Fermilab’s vision is to inspire the next generation of scientists and engineers. There’s no better way to do that than to give them a hands-on, close-up encounter with science. And there’s no better opportunity for such an encounter than the annual Family Open House, which will take place in Wilson Hall on Feb. 9 from 1-5 p.m. The Family Open House is one of the…
The Department of Energy recently gave the Muon g-2 experiment approval to proceed to the next phase of design. Photo: Cindy Arnold 2013 was a big year for the Muon g-2 experiment. Over the summer, the 52-foot-wide electromagnet that forms the core of the experiment was transported from New York to Illinois in a flurry of publicity. Construction began on the building that will house that device and should be completed in the next couple of months. And in December,…
Tingjun Yang (left) and Wesley Ketchum lead the effort to develop new 3-D reconstruction software for the MicroBooNE experiment. Here they stand inside the MicroBooNE time projection chamber. Photo: Reidar Hahn Imagine your job is to analyze the data coming from Fermilab’s MicroBooNE experiment. It wouldn’t be an easy task. MicroBooNE has been designed specifically to follow up on the MiniBooNE experiment, which may have seen hints of a fourth type of neutrino, one that does not interact with matter…
Kyle Wood (left) and James Hoffman, both of the University of Minnesota, work to fill the 14-kiloton far detector with liquid scintillator. The crew just reached the 2-million-gallon mark, with 700,000 gallons to go. The far detector, which is being constructed in northern Minnesota, is scheduled to be completed next summer. Photo: William Miller, NOvA installation manager The construction of the 14-kiloton NOvA far detector in Minnesota hit a major milestone this week: Collaboration members poured the 2 millionth gallon…