From CERN Courier, July 7, 2020: A new generation of accelerator and reactor experiments is opening an era of high-precision neutrino measurements to tackle questions such as leptonic CP violation, the mass hierarchy and the possibility of a fourth “sterile” neutrino. These include the international Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment, hosted by Fermilab, and Fermilab’s NOvA and Short-Baseline Neutrino programs.
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From Science, July 7, 2020: Spending panels in the U.S. House of Representatives have begun voting on bills to fund the government, and a few of them made use of an emergency mechanism to beef up research budgets. The national laboratories funded by the Department of Energy’s Office of Science is a big winner, receiving a one-time boost of $6.25 billion next year under a plan approved by a House spending panel, including funding for the Long-Baseline Neutrino Facility hosted by Fermilab.
From CERN Courier, July 7, 2020: Fermilab scientist Boris Kayser Texplains how neutrino physicists are now closing in on a crucial piece of evidence in a most convoluted detective story: the unknown origin of the matter–antimatter asymmetry observed in the universe.
From the Chicago Quantum Exchange, July 7, 2020: The Chicago Quantum Exchange has added to its community seven new corporate partners in computing, technology and finance that are working to bring about and primed to take advantage of the coming quantum revolution. These new industry partners are Intel, JPMorgan Chase, Microsoft, Quantum Design, Qubitekk, Rigetti Computing, and Zurich Instruments. The Chicago Quantum Exchange is anchored by the University of Chicago, Fermilab, Argonne National Laboratory and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and it includes the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Northwestern University.
Physics courses have a reputation among university students: If you don’t do well, then you probably weren’t meant to study science after all. Studies have shown that those who face the worst consequences from this mentality are those who are already less likely to be found in many STEM fields: women, underrepresented minorities and students from low-income backgrounds. The SEISMIC project aims to make introductory STEM courses successful for everyone.
From Department of Energy, July 6, 2020: DOE announces $132 million in funding for 64 university research awards on a range of topics in high-energy physics to advance knowledge of how the universe works at its most fundamental level. Projects include experimental work on neutrinos at Fermilab, the search for dark matter, studies of the nature of dark energy and the expansion of the universe with the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument and and investigation of the Higgs boson from data collected at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Switzerland.
From New Scientist, July 1, 2020: Fermilab theorist Gordan Krnjaic and Fermilab postdoc Daniel Carney of the University of Maryland are quoted in this article on efforts to sense its minuscule gravitational force as it brushes past us.
Scientists have begun operating the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument, or DESI, to create a 3-D map of over 30 million galaxies and quasars that will help them understand the nature of dark energy. The new instrument is the most advanced of its kind, with 5,000 robotic positioners that will enable scientists to gather more than 20 times more data than previous surveys. Researchers at Fermilab helped develop the software that will direct these positioners to focus on galaxies several billion light-years away and are currently in the process of fine-tuning the programs used before the last round of testing later this year.
From Physics, July 2, 2020: Fermilab scientist Marcela Carena is quoted in this overview of the European Strategy for Particle Physics Update. The update outlines a number of current and future priorities, including international neutrino experiments such as the forthcoming Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment, hosted by Fermilab, and the High-Luminosity Large Hadron Collider. It also prioritizes a 100-kilometer circular collider.
For the first time, the LHCb collaboration at CERN has observed an exotic particle made up of four charm quarks.