FESS’ Will Alvarez and Steve Whiteaker rescued this injured owl near the Industrial Center Building. Photo: Marie Herman, TD Last month a handful of Fermilab employees took part in the laboratory’s first owl rescue. It began one afternoon when the Industrial Center Building called the Roads and Grounds Department to report that an owl had been hanging around the building all morning. “It’s very uncommon to see an owl out during the day,” said FESS’ Dave Shemanske. “That was the…
The Tevatron and Main Injector cooling ponds are visible as the iconic double loop on Fermilab grounds. Much of the Tevatron’s cooling system shut down when the Tevatron turned off in 2011. Laboratory engineers are investigating ways to revive the Tevatron cooling ponds. Photo: Reidar Hahn A mark of some of the world’s most powerful particle accelerators, past and present, is the underground loop through which scientists accelerate subatomic particles to investigate the many mysteries of the universe. Crucial to…
Smart meters at Fermilab help conserve energy and reduce costs. Photo: Cedric Madison, FESS The comfort of a warm home is often accompanied by uncomfortably high heating bills this time of year. Your bill is tallied by a meter that monitors how much energy you use each month, which then feeds the information to electric and gas companies. Now compare your home with the more than 400 buildings on Fermilab grounds, and imagine what kind of bill the lab must…
Did you know that anytime you record a piece of information, you’re preserving a tradition that is approximately 10,000 years old? One of the earliest record-keeping systems used clay tokens that date back to between 9300 and 8600 BC. Although Fermilab is fresh out of clay tokens, the laboratory does have an extensive, electronic logbook database that would make its earthen ancestors proud. Each experiment at Fermilab has its own logbook where scientists and staff record information on a daily…
The University of Manchester particle physics group gathers for a holiday party in December. Last month, the University of Manchester joined the Universities Research Association. Photo courtesy of Stefan Söldner-Rembold With more than 80 faculty and students, the particle physics group of the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Manchester is one of the largest physics groups in the UK. Many of its physicists work on projects here at Fermilab, including DZero and the MINOS experiment. Therefore,…
Fermilab Theory Group Fellows. Top row, from left: Max Hansen, Andreas Kronfeld (program organizer), Alexander Kaurov. Bottom row, from left: Roberto Vega-Morales, Andrea Peterson, Chia Chang Chang, Chiu-Tien Yu When Roberto Vega-Morales arrived at Fermilab last fall as one of five 2012 Fermilab Theory Fellows, he said his expectations were high. Now in his fifth month of the fellowship program, Vega-Morales is surprised and happy to report that the experience has far exceeded his expectations and also helped him procure…
The design of the Wilson Hall stairwell guards provides safety while maintaining the open-air aesthetic of the atrium. One of Wilson Hall’s many attractive features is its open stairways, which overlook the building’s central plot of flowers, ivy and trees from as high up as the 15th floor. However, this feature was in danger of disappearing when engineers compared its aesthetic value against safety regulations last year. One proposal, for example, was to build cement or glass walls that would…
Francisco Rios maintains and monitors water cooling systems for machines in the Linac and Booster. Photo: Reidar Hahn How long have you been at Fermilab? I’ve been here 22 years. Describe a typical workday. My team and I are responsible for maintaining and monitoring water cooling systems for many of the lab’s machines, including the Linac, Main Injector Booster and NML. About 80 percent of our job is ensuring operations for these cooling systems are functioning properly, and we check…
The great blue heron is a year-round resident of Fermilab. It is one of the birds sighted at the recent Christmas bird count at Fermilab. Photo: Dave Spleha Every December the National Audubon Society, a nonprofit environmental organization focused on conservation, organizes a national bird census. Thousands of volunteers from across the country come together in small groups for a long day of looking and listening to deduce just how many birds and species of birds are in their area…
Bison, or American buffalo, have evolved to be able to withstand harsh winters. Photo: Reidar Hahn Amidst the backdrop of some of the world’s leading technology in particle physics, a herd of bison stand against the winter winds and falling snow at Fermilab. Although Fermilab is renowned for its scientific research, the bison—also known as American buffalo—are one of the laboratory’s main tourist attractions, and they rarely disappoint. Even on the coldest days, when temperatures drop well below freezing, the…