In the news

From DOE, June 18, 2020: It’s Pride Month, and several national laboratories have employee resource groups to advance LGBTQ+ individuals equality, inclusion and diversity in the workplace. Fermilab physicist Erica Snider, a member of the LGBTQ+ laboratory resource group Spectrum and the lab’s Scientist Advisory Council, will participate in the panel discussion on June 23 called “A Day in the Life: A Panel Discussion about LGBTQ+ inclusion.”

From The Innovation Platform, July 10, 2020: In this Q&A, Mauricio Suarez, Illinois Accelerator Research Center head and Fermilab deputy head of technology development and industry engagements, discusses the development of compact particle accelerators, using accelerators for the environment and in medicine, and commercializing technologies developed for high-energy physics.

From Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, June 17, 2020: While COVID-19 risks had led to a temporary halt in fabrication work on high-power superconducting magnets built by a collaboration of three national labs for an upgrade of the world’s largest particle collider at CERN in Europe, researchers at Berkeley Lab are still carrying out some project tasks. Fermilab scientist Giorgio Apollinari, head of the U.S.-based magnet effort for the HL-LHC, is quoted in this piece.

From Science News, June 17, 2020: An experiment searching for cosmic dark matter may have finally detected something. But it’s not dark matter. Scientists with the XENON1T experiment reported data June 17 showing an unexpectedly large number of blips within their detector. Fermilab scientist Dan Hooper is quoted in this piece.

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.

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.

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.

From Physics Today, June 1, 2020: Fermilab’s Chris Quigg and University of Chicago’s Mel Shochet recount the extraordinary career of Fermilab physicist and National Medal of Technology recipient Alvin Tollestrup, who died on Feb. 9.

From WGN9, May 27, 2020: Fermilab scientist Jen Raaf is featured in this four-minute segment on the Mechanical Ventilator Milano, which arrived to Chicago’s Stroger Hospital last week from Italy. Physicists have been troubleshooting the design at the hospital.