From The Beacon-News, April 18, 2019: The 12th annual STEM Career Expo at Fermilab allowed high school students interested in careers in math and science to interact with scientists at the lab and other professionals. More than 30 local companies and research organizations were represented at the event.
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One of the latest discoveries from the LHC takes the properties of photons beyond what your electrodynamics teacher will tell you in class. For most of the year, the LHC collides protons, but for about a month each fall, the LHC switches things up and collides heavy atomic nuclei, such as lead ions. The main purpose of these lead collisions is to study a hot and dense subatomic fluid called the quark-gluon plasma, which is harder to create in collisions of protons. But these ion runs also enable scientists to turn the LHC into a new type of machine: a photon-photon collider.
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.
From the Kane County Chronicle, April 11, 2019: High school students who are potentially interested in a career in the STEM fields are invited to learn more about opportunities at the Fermilab STEM Career Expo from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m. April 17 at in the atrium of Fermilab’s Wilson Hall. Students will meet with STEM professionals and ask questions about STEM careers. In addition to Fermilab scientists and engineers, the STEM Career Expo will feature more than 100 professionals from more than 30 local companies and research organizations who will explain what they do.
Four students have received the prestigious DOE Office of Science Graduate Student Research fellowships to conduct their research at Fermilab. The goal of the program is to prepare graduate students for STEM careers critically important to the Office of Science mission by providing graduate thesis research opportunities at DOE laboratories.
From ABC7: Fermilab scientist Brad Benson talks about the South Pole Telescope’s role part in the Event Horizon Telescope. Scientists behind the Event Horizon Telescope recently revealed the first image ever made of a black hole, depicting its hot, shadowy edges where light bends around itself in a cosmic funhouse effect. Assembling data gathered by eight radio telescopes around the world, astronomers created the picture showing the violent neighborhood around a supermassive black hole, the light-sucking monsters of the universe theorized by Einstein more than a century ago and confirmed by observations for decades.
From WBEZ’s Morning Shift, April 10, 2019: WBEZ interviews Fermilab scientist Brad Benson about the recent unveiling of the first ever photograph of a black hole. The Event Horizon Telescope, a collaboration between more than 200 scientists using telescopes from around the world, shot photographs of a supermassive black hole in the galaxy M87.
A re-examination of a particle discovered in 2015 has scientists debating its true identity. A recent analysis by the LHCb collaboration at CERN raises questions about the identity of this pentaquark—and may have taken scientists back to square one in the search for a particle that could shed light on questions about color.
From CERN, March 19, 2019: DUNE co-spokesperson Stefan Soldner-Rembold talks the international Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment hosted at Fermilab, neutrinos and the global particle physics community’s efforts to understand this subtle particle.
From CNN, April 10, 2019: Fermilab scientist Don Lincoln explains the big news from the Event Horizon Telescope on its first direct observation of a black hole at the center of a galaxy named M87. M87 is a supergiant elliptical galaxy in the constellation Virgo.