From Forbes, Jan. 5, 2021: Two measurements of the speed at which the universe is currently expanding disagree. It could be the first signs that cosmologists will have to make significant changes to their understanding of the cosmos. Fermilab scientist Don Lincoln explains.
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Workshops around the world train science teachers to incorporate particle physics into their classrooms.
From Forbes, Dec. 27, 2020: Astronomers have long known that the matter that they’ve seen is less than half of the atomic matter that exists. Several hypotheses have been advanced as to where that matter could be found. Fermilab scientist Don Lincoln describes how a team of astronomers has combined a series of astronomical facilities, including the Dark Energy Camera, to look for a filament of gas connecting two galaxy clusters. They were able to image the largest and hottest filament recorded to date.
From CNN, Dec. 29, 2020: Researchers are trying to harness the counterintuitive behavior of quantum mechanics to build quantum computers, leading eventually to a quantum internet. The effort isn’t just an abstract goal of academics; it has been identified by the U.S. government as an important national initiative. In this opinion piece, Fermilab scientist Don Lincoln discusses the recent quantum teleportation milestone at Fermilab and the quantum internet.
From CNN, Dec. 18, 2020: Fermilab scientist Don Lincoln summarizes the results of a group of researchers who, through simulation, reconstruct the family tree of the Milky Way, including the merging of the previously unknown dwarf galaxy Kraken.
Matter and antimatter particles can behave differently, but where these differences show up is still a puzzle. Scientists on the LHCb experiment at the Large Hadron Collider study much more subtle differences between matter particles and their antimatter equivalents. A recent analysis allowed them to revisit an old mystery — an asymmetry between asymmetries.
From VICE, Dec. 17, 2020: Fermilab and partners have successfully teleported qubits across 22 kilometers of fiber in two testbeds. The breakthrough is a step towards a practical, high-fidelity quantum internet. Fermilab scientist and Quantum Science Program Head Panagiotis Spentzouris is quoted in this article.
From Scientific American, Dec. 16, 2020: Researchers have made the most precise measurement of one of the fundamental constants, called the fine-structure constant. Now all eyes are on Fermilab, where the first results of the Muon g-2 experiment are expected to provide the most precise experimental measurement of the muon’s magnetic moment. Alex Keshavarzi, scientist on the Muon g-2 experiment, weighs in on the significance of the measurement.
The MicroBooNE neutrino experiment at Fermilab has published a new measurement that helps paint a more detailed portrait of the neutrino. This measurement more precisely targets one of the processes arising from the interaction of a neutrino with an atomic nucleus, one with a fancy name: charged-current quasielastic scattering.
The U.S. Department of Energy has formally approved the scope, schedule and cost of the PIP-II project at Fermilab. The PIP-II accelerator will become the heart of Fermilab’s upgraded accelerator complex, delivering more powerful proton beams to the lab’s experiments and enabling deeper probes of the fundamental constituents of the universe.