From APS News, March 16, 2023: The much anticipated P5 report will be out later this year. In the meantime, the 30-members of the P5 panel are gathering information at town hall meetings this summer. This input will be added to the new information gathered at Snowmass 2022 for the first time that includes more early career researcher involvement and improved conversations about equity and inclusion.
In the news
From Scientific American, March 16, 2023: Big news about a smaller size: MINERvA researchers used a new and entirely independent method to measure a proton’s radius. The team’s measurement of the proton’s radius was 0.73 femtometer, even smaller than the 0.84-femtometer electric charge radius. In either case, it is almost 10,000 times smaller than a hydrogen atom.
From the Daily Herald, March 15, 2023: Fermilab’s Mr. Freeze recently presented at an Addison Elementary District junior high school at its its annual Science Fun Night. Jerry Zimmerman, otherwise known as “Mr. Freeze,” demonstrated his infamous cryogenic experiment for a gymnasium full of families, teachers and students.
From the State University of Campinas, Unicamp (Brazil), March 13, 2023: This week Lia Merminga visited the State University of Campinas in São Paulo to attend a workshop on the purification of liquid argon. The event celebrated the achievements of the first phase of the LBNF/DUNE project and previewed the work to be carried out and the technologies to be developed in the next stage. Merminga stated the efforts of undergraduate and graduate students and the contributions of the university are essential to the success of DUNE.
From BBC Sky at Night Magazine, March 13, 2023: BBC speaks with Dr. Elena Gramellini, a Lederman Fellow at Fermilab, whose field of research is experimental particle physics and neutrino detectors. Dr. Gramellini explains neutrinos, cosmic building blocks and what they can tell us about the early Universe.
From Physics World, March 6, 2023: The MINERvA experiment at Fermilab has been used to study the structure of the proton using neutrinos. Teijin Cai and colleagues working on Fermilab’s MINERvA experiment have showed how information about the proton can be extracted from neutrinos that have been scattered by the detector’s plastic target.
From University of Virginia Today, March 7, 2023: University of Virginia physicists shipped its last truckload of five large, specialized panels that contain the detector that will form the shell of the international Muon-to-electron Conversion Experiment, or Mu2e experiment. UVA professors, technicians, postdoctoral fellows, graduate students and undergrads have worked on a total of 83 detector modules, each weighing as much as 2,000 pounds, totaling about 160,000 pounds of materials.
From New Scientist: New Scientist presents a new series featuring experts at the leading-edge of scientific discovery. The series includes prize-winning astrophysicist John Mather who discusses the groundbreaking operations of the James Webb Space Telescope. Also, Fermilab senior scientist Don Lincoln explores how Fermilab has taught us so much about our universe, future research plans and how research results aid theorists in their quest for a ‘Theory of Everything’.
From University of Virginia Today, March 7, 2023: University of Virginia physicists shipped the last truckload of five large, specialized panels that contain the detector that will form the shell of the international Muon-to-electron Conversion Experiment, or Mu2e experiment. UVA professors, technicians, postdoctoral fellows, graduate students and undergrads have worked on a total of 83 detector modules, each weighing as much as 2,000 pounds, totaling about 160,000 pounds of materials.
From Amazon Web Services blog, March 7, 2023: The new Quantum Instrumentation Control Kit (QICK) developed by Fermilab and U Chicago engineers proved to drastically improve quantum computer performance while cutting the cost of control equipment. Now, Amazon Web Services has collaborated with Fermilab QICK engineers to have the tool kit accepted as an open-source software project for quantum devices.