Fermilab postdoc Minerba Betancourt addresses the crowd in Fermilab’s first Spanish-language Ask-a-Scientist event. Photo: Jesus Orduna
On Sunday, March 12, Fermilab hosted “Pregúntale a un Científico,” which was attended by almost 100 curious neighbors of all ages.
The Spanish-language offering was part of the laboratory’s long-standing Ask-a-Scientist program. Although the program has been around in its current form for 15 years, this is the first time an event has been held in a language other than English.
Over the course of three hours, the attendees heard a lecture about neutrinos and Fermilab’s role in studying them by Minerba Betancourt, a Fermilab postdoctoral researcher. They were also given a tour of different areas of Fermilab, including the Main Control Room, Ramsey Auditorium and the linear accelerator corridor.
Ask-a-Scientist is held on the first Sunday of every month and features a lecture, tour of the facilities and opportunity to ask Fermilab physicists any physics question you want.
Edgar Valencia, a postdoctoral researcher from The College of William and Mary working on the MINERvA experiment who led one of the tours, said that the tour helped dispel myths that Fermilab was a closed-off and secretive place.
“Events like these are important to show the community that all we’re really doing is science,” he said.
Edgar Valencia, a postdoc on the MINERvA experiment, explains how the Fermilab linear accelerator works. Photo: Dan Garisto
“There was interest in doing it in Spanish, so we got people together and set it up,” said Peter Garbincius, who founded and heads the Ask-A-Scientist program. “We had no idea what to expect though.”
Much of the event is the same as its English-language counterpart, but there are still a few tricky phrasings to work out.
“Some things are hard to translate to Spanish,” Valencia said.
His advice? Avoid technical English and use common words if you can. Talking about muons or electrons? Try “las partículas cargadas,” which literally translates as “charged particles.”
Daniel Laguna, a visiting high school student, said that what he found most interesting was the collaboration between physicists.
“I didn’t know about the worldwide collaboration, with people from Fermilab working with CERN and stuff, to solve these problems,” he said.
Valencia said that when people come here and take part in the tour, they want to know more.
“I was only expecting 10 or 20 people, so I was really surprised at the numbers and the receptiveness,” he said. “I told them to come back and visit the Lederman Science Center.”
According to Garbincius, the event was so successful that Fermilab is considering scheduling Pregúntale a un Cientifíco on a regular basis.
It’s an exciting time for the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment. With the worldwide scientific collaboration nearing 1,000 scientists from 30 countries, prototype detectors being built and tested at CERN, and construction scheduled to begin this year at the Sanford Underground Research Facility, the future looks bright for this most ambitious of long-distance neutrino experiments.
In a vote earlier this month, the DUNE collaboration elected a new co-spokesperson to see them through the next two years. And from a pool of highly qualified candidates they chose someone who has been with the experiment since its very beginnings: Edward Blucher, professor of physics and former chair of the Physics Department at the University of Chicago. Blucher also serves as the head of the Fermilab Physics Advisory Committee, a job he will step down from when he assumes his new role with DUNE.
In the late 2000s, Blucher chaired the executive board that led to the Long-Baseline Neutrino Experiment, one of the precursors of DUNE. He’s dedicated most of his career to one of DUNE’s science goals — shedding light on the matter-antimatter asymmetry of the universe — and is excited by the scale of this experiment and its potential for a breakthrough.
“Years ago we could not have imagined the alignment we have now between the collaboration, the laboratories and the funding agency,” he said. “It’s been in discussions for a long, long time, and we were hopeful, but it wasn’t real. Now I think we’ve crossed that bridge. It’s a real thing now, and it’s incredibly exciting, but also extremely challenging for the collaboration.”
The challenges, he said, are not just technical. With the prototype detectors under way and the short-baseline neutrino program at Fermilab providing important research and development for liquid-argon neutrino detector technology, an important part of the next few years will be for the collaboration to draw effectively on all of the talent available worldwide, Blucher said.
“How do we engage the enormous pool of talent in the collaboration to build the best possible experiment?” he said. “For DUNE to be successful, it is essential that we find ways to involve and engage all of our collaborators.”
Blucher will take over the position from André Rubbia of ETH Zurich and will join Mark Thomson of the University of Cambridge as co-spokesperson.
“I have known Ed for a number of years, and I am looking forward to working closely with him,” Thomson said. “The next two years are incredibly important for DUNE, and I’m pleased to have someone of Ed’s caliber in this role.”
In recognition of International Women’s Day, March 8, we present a photo gallery of women at Fermilab: technicians, admins, scientists, educators, engineers and many other professionals whose work helps drive discovery. Thank you, women of Fermilab, for pushing us toward the frontiers of fundamental science.
