Newsroom

The Fermilab Holometer has reached its design luminosity, building up more than 1 kilowatt of infrared laser power stored in a 40-meter-long Michelson interferometer. This light intensity corresponds to more than 10 billion trillion photons per second hitting the interferometer optics. It also allows scientists to measure the optics’ positions to a resolution 1,000 times smaller than the size of a proton.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences today awarded the Nobel Prize in physics to theorists Peter Higgs and Francois Englert to recognize their work developing the theory of what is now known as the Higgs field, which gives elementary particles mass. U.S. scientists played a significant role in advancing the theory and in discovering the particle that proves the existence of the Higgs field, the Higgs boson.

Fermilab is looking for volunteers to help with its annual prairie seed harvest. Two harvest events are planned, on Saturday, Oct. 5 and Saturday, Nov. 2, beginning at 10 a.m. Fermilab’s site hosts 1,000 acres of restored native prairie land, and each year community members pitch in to help collect seeds from those native plants.

For the past month, a 50-foot-wide circular electromagnet has been on a fantastic journey between two U.S. Department of Energy national labs: Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York and Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Illinois. On Friday, July 26, that voyage is expected to conclude. Fermilab is planning a party to celebrate the ring’s safe arrival, and everyone’s invited.