News

Hard to believe you can play pool with neutrinos, but certain neutrino events are closer to the game than you think. These special interactions involve a neutrino — famously elusive — striking a particle inside a nucleus like a billiard ball. MINERvA scientists study the dynamics of this subatomic ricochet to learn about the neutrino that triggered the collision. Now they have measured the probability of these quasielastic interactions using Fermilab’s medium-energy neutrino beam. Such measurements are important for current and future neutrino experiments.

From INFN, April 9, 2020: L’industria di solito non utilizza l’elettronica che opera a temperature criogeniche, perciò i fisici delle particelle hanno dovuto costruirsela da sé. Una collaborazione tra numerosi laboratori nazionali afferenti al Dipartimento dell’Energia, incluso il Fermilab, ha sviluppato prototipi dell’elettronica che verrà alla fine utilizzata nell’esperimento internazionale DUNE – Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment, ospitato dal Fermilab.

On April 28, baby bison season officially began. The first calf of the year was born in the late morning, and mother and baby are doing well. Fermilab is expecting between 12 and 14 new calves this spring.

Supernova 1987A, the closest supernova observed with modern technology, excited the world more than 30 years ago — and it remains an intriguing subject of study even today.

Scientists and engineers at Fermilab and Brookhaven are uniting with other organizations in the Open Science Grid to help fight COVID-19 by dedicating considerable computational power to researchers studying how they can help combat the virus-borne disease.

From Scientific American, April 23, 2020: New evidence from neutrinos points to one of several theories about why the cosmos is made of matter and not antimatter. Fermilab scientists Marcela Carena and Jessica Turner and DUNE spokesperson Ed Blucher weigh in.

An ensemble of soprano, strings, piano and electronics gives voice to the mysterious neutrino in David Ibbett’s latest musical work as Fermilab guest composer. Mapping the waves of neutrino oscillation onto melodies played by the strings, Ibbett sonifies a neutrino phenomenon typically represented in abstract mathematical expressions. Hear the performance and Ibbett’s comments in this four-minute video.

From Forbes, April 21, 2020: Fermilab’s artist-in-residence and guest composer programs are featured in this article on programs that combine art and scientific research.

Catanzano began bringing science into her poetry after exploring poetry as a “philosophical investigation,” a step that she says drew her into thinking about how poems negotiate time. That brought Catanzano to physics and Albert Einstein’s theories of special relativity and general relativity.

Typically, Fermilab employee Keenan Newton spends his days managing Fermilab’s main content management platforms and his nights and weekends as a volunteer firefighter. Now he’s arranged his schedule to serve the Illinois Emergency Management Agency, volunteering his personal time to help people during the current pandemic and responding to hazardous situations while based at the State Emergency Operations Center in Springfield.