This year, four of Fermilab’s CMS postdoctoral researchers were among those invited to share their work and the work of their colleagues at a series of particle physics conferences.
Don Lincoln
Don Lincoln is a Fermilab scientist.
On March 20, the Fermilab LHC Remote Operations Center hosted a visit by the Committee on Elementary Particle Physics. During the visit, the committee showed keen interest in what excited the postdocs and early career scientists who were present.
Among the most interesting astronomical bodies is the black hole; but it’s also one of the most misunderstood. In this video, Don Lincoln debunks some common misconceptions about black holes and also explains some important truths.
Using Newtonian physics, physicists have found an expression for the value of kinetic energy, specifically KE = ½ m v^2. Einstein came up with a very different expression, specifically KE = (gamma – 1) m c^2. In this video, Don Lincoln shows how these two equations are the same at low energy and how you get from one to the other.
Scientists at Fermilab have been world leaders — precisely measuring known physics and scouring the data, looking for hints that we may need to revise the Standard Model. Presentations of new results at a recent conference could indicate that physics discoveries are right around the corner.
For researchers interested in unlocking the mysteries of the universe, having access to the most powerful high-energy accelerator on the planet, a world-class detector, and young, fresh, and enthusiastic minds are a winning combination – and the Fermilab CMS Department has all three.
For a week spanning the months of July and August, scientists from around the world virtually gathered to attend the prestigious biennial ICHEP conference. At ICHEP, some of the most exciting physics results of the year are unveiled. CMS scientists from Fermilab and the LHC Physics Center were well-represented at the conference.
Fermilab runs several vibrant programs aimed at educating students of all ages in all of our myriad technical endeavors, be they scientific, engineering or computational. All departments participate in these programs, but the CMS Department was especially luckily this summer. We were able to attract over a dozen exceptional young interns who participated in a broad swath of CMS activities, spanning analysis, detector upgrades and computer infrastructure.
This March, scientists from around the world gathered in LaThuile, Italy, for the 53rd annual Recontres de Moriond conference, one of the longest running and most prestigious conferences in particle physics. This conference is broken into two distinct weeks, with the first week usually covering electroweak physics and the second covering processes involving quantum chromodynamics. Fermilab and the LHC Physics Center were well represented at the conference.
The success of a scientific experiment can be measured in a few ways, but perhaps the best one is number of scientific publications. Even there, there are different ways of counting them, but a good method is the number of publications submitted per year. And in 2018, CMS had a banner year in terms of scientific output. The CMS collaboration broke a record, with 141 scientific papers submitted to peer reviewed journals. That’s nearly three each week. The previous record in high-energy physics was also held by CMS. In 2017, the CMS experiment submitted 132 papers.