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A universe is born

By developing clever theories and conducting experiments with particle colliders, telescopes and satellites, physicists have been able to wind the film of the universe back billions of years—and glimpse the details of the very first moments in the history of our cosmic home. Take a (brief) journey through the early history of our cosmos.

Existing spaces a mile underground on the 4850 Level are being rehabbed to prepare for the excavation of the LBNF caverns. The space shown here is the area that will be used for loading rock into the buckets (“skips”) to transport it up the Ross Shaft. Credit: Fermilab

Long-Baseline Neutrino Facility pre-excavation work is in full swing

Excavating about 800,000 tons of rock a mile underground, bringing it to the surface, and then transporting it to its final resting place is a huge job and part of the LBNF/DUNE project. Creating the infrastructure for that job is a huge amount of work by itself and is going on right now.

It takes a village

Building a particle physics laboratory requires more than physicists. Fermilab archivist Valerie Higgins has authored a paper available in the online physics repository arXiv, and earlier this month she published an op-ed for Physics World on the importance of capturing perspectives from all parts of the laboratory. She sat down with Symmetry writer Lauren Biron to discuss her thoughts.

The Fermilab bison herd welcomed its first baby this season on April 20. Photo: Reidar Hahn

First baby bison of the year born at Fermilab

On Saturday, April 20, baby bison season officially began. The first calf of the year was born in the early morning hours, and mother and baby are doing well. Fermilab is expecting between 12 and 14 new calves this spring, and all of our neighbors are welcome to come on site to see and photograph the newborns.

In electrospinning, a positive charge is applied to liquidized material to create thin strands that eventually harden into a solid, fibrous material. Photo: Reidar Hahn

Spinning new targets for accelerators

Fermilab scientists are preparing for future, high-power particle beams with a technological advance inspired by spinning sugar. It’s a new type of target — the material that beams collide with to produce other particles, such as neutrinos. The target is designed to be able to withstand the heat from high-intensity beams, expanding the potential of experiments that use them. Researching this new patent-pending technology already has led to a TechConnect Innovation Award and might have applications in the medical field.

Astrophysicists capture first image of a black hole

The Event Horizon Telescope—a planet-scale array of eight ground-based radio telescopes forged through international collaboration—was designed to capture images of a black hole. On April 10, in coordinated news conferences across the globe, researchers revealed that they have succeeded, unveiling the first direct visual evidence of a supermassive black hole and its shadow. 

MINERvA successfully completes its physics run

On Feb. 26, a team on Fermilab’s MINERvA neutrino experiment gathered around a computer screen to officially conclude its data acquisition. Even with the data collection over, the work marches on. MINERvA now turns its attention to analyzing the data it has collected over the past nine years of its run.