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Test beams generally sit to the side of full-on accelerators, sipping beam and passing it to the reconfigurable spaces housing temporary experiments. Scientists bring pieces of their detectors — sensors, chips, electronics or other material — and blast them with the well-understood beam to see if things work how they expect, and if their software performs as expected. Before a detector component can head to its forever home, it has to pass the test.

The cryostat for Berkeley Lab’s LUX-ZEPLIN experiment — the largest direct-detection dark matter experiment in the U.S. — is successfully moved to its research cavern. This final journey of LZ’s central detector on Oct. 21 to its resting place in a custom-built research cavern required extensive planning and involved two test moves of a “dummy” detector to ensure its safe delivery.

After 32 years as Fermilab’s staff photographer, Reidar Hahn is retiring – and saying farewell with a final collection of photos in Fermilab’s art gallery. The exhibit will run from Nov. 6, 2019, to Jan. 3, 2020, with a free artist’s reception on Nov. 8.

Berkeley Lab’s Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument aimed its robotic array of 5,000 fiber-optic “eyes” at the night sky Oct. 22 to capture the first images showing its unique view of galaxy light. It was the first test DESI with its nearly complete complement of components. Fermilab contributed key elements to DESI, including the corrector barrel, hexapod, cage and CCDs. Fermilab also provided the online databases used for data acquisition and the software for the instrument’s robotic positioners.

Latin American institutions are instrumental in creating photon detectors for the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment.

What keeps galaxies from flying apart? What is the invisible mass that bends light in space? For now, we’re calling it dark matter, and this Oct. 31, laboratories around the world are shining a light on the search for it. Dark Matter Day events include live webcasts with researchers, dark matter scavenger hunts and a Reddit AMA.

A collaboration with fewer than 100 members has played an important role in Fermilab’s ongoing partnership with Latin American scientists and institutions.

Today, as vice president of research at the University of Colima in Mexico, Alfredo Ananda’s main occupation is building a more certain route to a research career for Latin American students. He does this by providing them with challenging academics and international connections.

On Thursday, Oct. 17, from approximately 9 p.m. to midnight, Fermilab and the Kane County Sheriff’s Office will conduct live-gunfire tests of Fermilab’s on-site gunfire detection system. These tests will be conducted safely, using bullet traps – no live rounds will be fired into the air or into the ground, and there will be no danger to the public or wildlife. However, the sound of gunfire may be heard in neighborhoods near Fermilab on Thursday evening.

Advances in subatomic physics heavily depend on ingenuity and technology. And when it comes to discovering the nature of some of the most elusive particles in the universe, neutrinos, scientists need the best and most sensitive detector technology possible. Scientists working at CERN have started tests of a new neutrino detector prototype, using a very promising technology called “dual phase.”