From Pesquisa, November 2020: The FAPESP scientific director shares how he encouraged behaviors that helped improve research in São Paulo. With FAPESP encouragement, researchers in Brazil have held leadership positions in international collaborations, including in a photon detection system called Arapuca. Arapuca is a technology used in Fermilab’s Short-Baseline Near Detector and a baseline technology for the international Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment, hosted by Fermilab.
In the news – DUNE media
From Black Hills Pioneer, Nov. 17, 2020: Thyssen Mining Company, one of North America’s largest mining companies, has signed a three-year contract to excavate space for the Long Baseline Neutrino Facility at Sanford Lab in South Dakota. The company plans to bring about 110 jobs for miners, operators, mechanics, electricians, engineers, and managers. Thyssen Mining is currently preparing office space in Lead, as well as getting personnel lined up, contracting with local vendors, and preparing equipment for the project.
From Quanta Magazine, October 2020: This 17-minute podcast episode explores how three physicists stumbled across an unexpected relationship between some of the most ubiquitous objects in math. Hear Fermilab scientist Stephen Parke, DUNE collaborator Deborah Harris of York University, and Fields medalist Terence Tao discuss neutrinos, linear algebra, and the international, Fermilab-hosted Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment.
From Science, Oct. 2, 2020: As U.S. particle physicists start to drum up new ideas for the next decade in a yearlong Snowmass process they have no single big project to push for (or against). Physicists have just started to build the current plan’s centerpiece: The Long-Baseline Neutrino Facility at Fermilab will shoot particles through 1,300 kilometers of rock to the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment in South Dakota. Fermilab Deputy Director of Research Joe Lykken and Fermilab scientist Vladimir Shiltsev comment on other possible pursuits in high-energy physics.
From Futurism, Aug. 19, 2020: When an ambitious new Fermilab-hosted experiment called DUNE begins its work, physicists believe they’ll be able to learn a whole lot more about supernova explosions than ever before. That’s because DUNE is expected to be sensitive to an extremely elusive particle called a neutrino that’s blasted far and wide across the cosmos when a star explodes. According to a new paper shared online on Saturday, physicists expect DUNE to scoop up a never-before-detected kind of neutrino and, in doing so, break down why and how stars die in unprecedented detail.
From Rapid City Journal, Aug. 6, 2020: Crews have begun installing a rock conveyor over U.S. Highway 85 in Lead, South Dakota, for the Long-Baseline Neutrino Facility. The conveyor will bring 800,000 tons of rock from the 4850 level of Sanford Underground Research Facility and deposit them into an open pit mining area that was excavated by the Homestake Gold Mine in the 1980s, making way for the international Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment, hosted by Fermilab.
From Black Hills Pioneer, July 22, 2020: Since late 2019, work has been underway on the Long-Baseline Neutrino Facility conveyor system at the Sanford Underground Research Facility in South Dakota. The system will carry more than 800,000 tons of rock excavated from the site of the international, Fermilab-hosted Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment 4,850-feet below the surface. A major milestone for the project was met on July 20 as the 120-foot section of the truss, which will house the conveyor, was erected above the highway.
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 Gizmodo, May 18, 2020: Neutrino physics is a trek into the unknown, one that the United States physics community has chosen to pursue full-on. A flagship experiment called LBNF/DUNE will lead the search, in pursuit of answers that may take decades or more to find. Fermilab Deputy Director for Research Joe Lykken, DUNE spokesperson Ed Blucher, and DUNE scientists Chang Kee Jung and Elizabeth Worcester talk about how neutrinos will enhance our understanding of the universe.
From Quanta Magazine, April 15, 2020: The first official evidence of a key imbalance between neutrinos and antineutrinos provides one of the best clues for why the universe contains something rather than nothing. Fermilab scientist Debbie Harris comments on the T2K experiment’s latest result. Fermilab’s NOvA experiment and the international Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment, hosted by Fermilab, will also help provide a more precise understanding of the asymmetry.