In the news

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.

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.

Chicago Magazine talks with Brendan Casey and Brendan Kiburg on the Muon g-2 results announced in August.

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.

From Big Think: A recent series of precise measurements of the Moon confirms that there are two types of mass which are the same. In Einstein’s most advanced theory, there are three “kinds” of mass that are thought to be one and the same but there is no fundamental reason why. Don Lincolns explains why.

From Unicamp (upon opening the link, right click to translate to English): Last week, directors and scientists from Unicamp (the University of Campinas) and other research institutions visited Fermilab as part of the critical assessment by DOE on the progress of the international collaboration in building the large underground neutrino detector at LBNF. The University is responsible for the development and subsequent production of two sets of central equipment that will make up the laboratory to be installed in South Dakota 1,500 meters underground. One of the sets will be used to detect photons and the other to purify liquid argon.