External

The ATLAS collaboration has begun to publish likelihood functions, information that will allow researchers to better understand and use their experiment’s data in future analyses.

From CERN Courier, Jan. 13, 2021: The US LHC Accelerator Upgrade Project, led by Fermilab scientist Giorgio Apollinari, is now entering the production phase in the construction of magnets for the upcoming High-Luminosity LHC, an upgrade of the current Large Hadron Collider. U.S. labs are building magnets that will focus beams near the ATLAS and CMS particle detectors.

Once the most popular framework for physics beyond the Standard Model, supersymmetry is facing a reckoning — but many researchers are not giving up on it yet.

From Forbes, Jan. 11, 2021: Fermilab scientist Don Lincoln explains a result from the LHCb experiment that adds another data point on nature’s matter-antimatter imbalance.

From Interesting Engineering, Jan. 5, 2021: A recent breakthroughs in transmitting, storing, and manipulating quantum information have convinced some physicists that a simple proof of principle for a quantum network is imminent. In 2017, a number of institutions partnered with Fermilab to begin constructing a quantum network hosted at Fermilab.

From Forbes, Jan. 5, 2021: Two measurements of the speed at which the universe is currently expanding disagree. It could be the first signs that cosmologists will have to make significant changes to their understanding of the cosmos. Fermilab scientist Don Lincoln explains.

Workshops around the world train science teachers to incorporate particle physics into their classrooms.

From Forbes, Dec. 27, 2020: Astronomers have long known that the matter that they’ve seen is less than half of the atomic matter that exists. Several hypotheses have been advanced as to where that matter could be found. Fermilab scientist Don Lincoln describes how a team of astronomers has combined a series of astronomical facilities, including the Dark Energy Camera, to look for a filament of gas connecting two galaxy clusters. They were able to image the largest and hottest filament recorded to date.

From CNN, Dec. 29, 2020: Researchers are trying to harness the counterintuitive behavior of quantum mechanics to build quantum computers, leading eventually to a quantum internet. The effort isn’t just an abstract goal of academics; it has been identified by the U.S. government as an important national initiative. In this opinion piece, Fermilab scientist Don Lincoln discusses the recent quantum teleportation milestone at Fermilab and the quantum internet.

From CNN, Dec. 18, 2020: Fermilab scientist Don Lincoln summarizes the results of a group of researchers who, through simulation, reconstruct the family tree of the Milky Way, including the merging of the previously unknown dwarf galaxy Kraken.