After scanning in depth about a quarter of the southern skies for six years and cataloguing hundreds of millions of distant galaxies, the Dark Energy Survey will finish taking data on Jan. 9. DES scientists recorded data from more than 300 million distant galaxies. More than 400 scientists from over 25 institutions around the world have been involved in the project, hosted by Fermilab. The collaboration has already produced about 200 academic papers, with more to come.
From CNN, Jan. 3, 2019: Fermilab scientist Don Lincoln discusses NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft and Ultima Thule, a frigid, snowman-shaped block of ice located about 4 billion miles from the sun.
Fermilab has finalized an agreement with construction firm Kiewit-Alberici Joint Venture to start pre-excavation work for the Long-Baseline Neutrino Facility, which will house the enormous particle detectors for the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment. The South Dakota portion of the facility will be built a mile beneath the surface at the Sanford Underground Research Facility in Lead, South Dakota.
Beard most recently served as senior director of corporate communications at Burson-Marsteller in Chicago, a leading global public relations firm, where he led the development and execution of communication and external affairs programs for Fortune 500 clients.
In a new series of exhibits in the Fermilab Art Gallery, the Fermilab Archives will feature influential works loaned by the private collection of a Fermilab scientist. It kicks off with the current exhibit, which features works from the 17th and 18th centuries. Each display, which will rotate approximately once a month, will consist of several volumes illustrating a common theme in the evolution of physics.
From the Associated Press, Dec. 19, 2018: Fermilab’s second director, Leon Lederman, appears in this “in memoriam” list for 2018.
From The New York Times, Dec. 21, 2018: The largest machine ever built is shutting down for two years of upgrades. Take an immersive tour of the collider and study the remnants of a Higgs particle in augmented reality.
The new technology is a miniaturized version of a sensor developed for the CMS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider. But instead of being used for discovery science, the sensors are developed to screen cargo by detecting muons, particles that penetrate materials such as concrete and lead. Scientists at Fermilab, Los Alamos National Laboratory and the Nevada National Security Site designed, assembled and tested the small, slim sensors, which could replace bulkier screening technologies.
From Big Think, Dec. 19, 2018: Fermilab scientist Don Lincoln comments on the theory of loop quantum gravity applied to black holes, the subject of two papers that go against the previous theories that predicted the center of a black hole to feature a point of infinite density called a singularity.
From Live Science, Dec. 25, 2018: Results from Fermilab’s MiniBooNE neutrino experiment makes Live Science’s top science stories of 2018, at number 4.