From Science, Aug. 8, 2019: Fermilab physicists are resurrecting a massive particle detector by lowering it into a tomblike pit and embalming it with a chilly fluid. In August, workers eased two gleaming silver tanks bigger than shipping containers, the two halves of the detector, into a concrete-lined hole. Hauled from Europe two years ago, ICARUS will soon start a second life seeking perhaps the strangest particles physicists have dreamed up, oddballs called sterile neutrinos.
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Tran’s $2.5 million award will fund the development of new ways to handle the massive amounts of data that particle physics produces and to expand investigations of Higgs boson physics.
Photographer Adam Nadel started his residency at Fermilab taking the portraits he is known for, but then he found himself venturing onto new artistic ground.
Machado’s $2.5 million award will fund theoretical physics research to get the most out of Fermilab’s exploration of neutrino science. He plans to collaborate with scientists at Fermilab and other institutions to develop ideas that will guide experimentalists in addressing one of nature’s most mysterious particles.
Our world is governed by general relativity, which sees gravity as the effects of massive objects warping space-time. The world of particle physics, on the other hand, envisions all forces as mediated by force-carrying particles — and ignores gravity entirely. This year’s Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics was awarded to three theorists who proposed a way to marry these contradictory descriptions: with a theory called “supergravity.”
From The University of Arizona News, Aug. 1, 2019: The University of Arizona touts two members of the Dark Energy Survey who received DOE awards.
From Popular Science, July 29, 2019: “Death by Dark Matter” is not the name of your new favorite metal band; it’s the literal title of a new study by a trio of American of physicists. Fermilab science Dan Hooper is quoted in this article on their paper, which explores what the hypothetical consequences might be on the human population if a certain candidate of dark matter turned out to be true.
The award is designed to bolster the nation’s scientific workforce by providing support to exceptional researchers during the crucial early years, when many scientists do their most formative work.
A pioneer in particle physics and high-performance computing, Fermilab has launched HEPCloud, a cloud computing service that will enable the lab’s demanding experiments to make the best, most efficient use of computing resources. This flagship project lets experiments rent computing resources from external sources during peak demand, reducing the costs of providing for local resources while also providing failsafe redundancy.
Karen Kosky gets to see many different aspects of Fermilab. She is the head of the Facilities Engineering Services Section, which manages everything from buildings and high-voltage electric systems to prairie burns and our herd of bison. She and her team work hard to maintain the site and keep Fermilab’s conventional facilities and property operations running smoothly.