The lab will co-host with Brookhaven National Laboratory the STEM-based summer program for first-year college students from underrepresented groups and underserved schools.
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The Higgs boson is the only fundamental particle known to be scalar, meaning it has no quantum spin. This fact answers questions about our universe, but it also raises new ones.
From Big Think, Feb. 16, 2023: Common sense says nothing is nothing but science proves that nothing is in fact something. Fermilab’s Don Lincoln explains at the tiny quantum level, empty space is actually a vibrant place with tiny subatomic particles appearing and disappearing.
From Big Think, Feb. 15, 2023: The Standard Model of Physics has been challenged by the Muon g-2 and W-boson measurements. Don Lincoln discusses a recent paper in the journal Nature Communications that attempted to resolve two significant discrepancies in particle physics.
From Popular Science, Feb. 3, 2023: Recently, researchers created a full 3D muon image of a nuclear reactor the size of a large building which provides a safer way of inspecting old reactors or checking on nuclear waste. Scientists can collect muons to paint images of objects as if they were X-rays. Fermilab’s Alan Bross and a team of researchers are working to use this same technology to image the inside of the Great Pyramid of Giza.
Scientists have proposed new instruments that would use spectroscopy to decode dark matter, dark energy and cosmic inflation.
Scientists in the particle physics community are bringing environmental and climate issues to the table in discussions about future research.
From Big Think, Feb. 6, 2023: For the first time, the proton’s size and structure was measured using Fermilab’s MINERVA detector by studying proton/neutrino interactions. This new method, which studies weak force interactions, is a first step in which scientists can use to better understand the laws of the Universe.
From National Geographic (Poland), Feb. 2, 2023: A group of 150 scientists, including researchers from Fermilab and the University of Chicago, has published one of the most precise measurements of the distribution of matter in the Universe. The analysis is groundbreaking because it used data from two very different telescope surveys and it indicated that something is missing in the current standard model of the universe.
Anton Zeilinger, who received the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics, pioneered research on quantum teleportation and entanglement swapping. These technologies are instrumental in the success of the Illinois-Express Quantum Network, which recently published a paper outlining its design concepts and implementation. The technologies are also the basis for the quantum devices that generate the network.