In the news

Catching ghost particles

Although neutrinos are the most common matter particle in the universe they are also known as ghost particles because they move through our bodies every second without ever interacting with us. Neutrinos won’t be scaring anyone on Halloween but they will be studied by scientists in the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment led by Fermilab.

The Biden-Harris administration named the Chicago region an official U.S. Regional and Innovation Technology Hub for quantum technologies yesterday. The announcement was part of the first phase of a federal initiative designed to “supercharge” innovation economies that have the potential to become global leaders in critical technology. The Technology Hubs program includes the Chicago Quantum Exchange’s Bloch Tech Hub making them eligible for funding to implement the hub’s activities.

The U.S. Department of Energy announced $137 million in funding for 80 projects in high energy physics. The funding will support research projects on muon and neutrino science, quantum mechanics of black holes, dark matter and Fermilab’s Short Baseline Neutrino program, including the ICARUS experiment.

Is gravity a force? It’s complicated

Which theory on gravity is the most accurate at describing reality? Don Lincoln suggests perhaps we have reached a moment of scientific Zen and that gravity just is.

Fermilab’s Don Lincoln describes the annular eclipse that will occur this Saturday, Oct. 14. Break out your eclipse protective eyewear because the thin ring of sunlight that will encircle the moon is very bright even though Illinois is not in the path of maximum coverage.

The University of Liverpool is addressing the most fundamental research questions in physics – leading and influencing global discovery driven scientific efforts to advance our understanding and description of nature. Fermilab is included in this video about pioneering precision and neutrino physics experiments, including the Muon g-2 experiment and commentary by Professors Graziano Venanzoni, Muon g-2 co-spokesperson.

From Big Think: Is it true, what goes up must come down? Don Lincoln explores the ALPHA collaboration’s use of CERN’s Antimatter Factory to test if antimatter might experience gravity in a manner opposite of ordinary matter. The conclusion: antimatter does not fall upward.

From Popular Science: A new observatory under construction in China—the Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory, or JUNO—plans to hunt the elusive neutrino with better sensitivity than ever before. Expected to be operational in 2024, this detector will not only be bigger, but also more sensitive to slight variations in neutrinos’ energies than any of its predecessors.