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.
Lab director Robert R. Wilson and others celebrate the accelerator achieving an energy of 200 GeV.
After years of design and construction, the NAL Main Ring achieved its design energy of 200 GeV on March 1, 1972, ahead of schedule and under its authorized $250 million budget.
The NAL Accelerator Section had achieved a beam of 20 GeV on Jan. 22, 53 GeV on Feb. 4, and 100 GeV on Feb. 11, surpassing the 76-GeV machine at Serpukhov in the U.S.S.R. which, up until that point, had been the most powerful accelerator in the world. By the morning of March 1, the lab employees knew they were on the cusp of achieving the design energy they had been striving towards. By 11 a.m., they had a steady, stable beam. At 12:30 p.m., the beam reached a new record of 167 GeV, and people began gathering around the screen in the Control Room to watch the beam’s progress. At 1:08 p.m., the crowd cheered as the beam passed 200 GeV for the first time. The achievement was followed by a lively labwide celebration.
The lab quickly surpassed this 200-GeV energy goal, reaching 300 GeV on July 16, 1972, and 500 GeV on May 14, 1976.
You can read about the achievement of 200 GeV in the March 9, 1972, Village Crier. You can also read the Main Ring logbook entry from March 1, 1972, which includes signatures by many of the people present for the event.
Visit the history website for more photos of this day in Fermilab history.
The seventh page from the Main Ring logbook entry for March 1, 1972. Note the “Hip hip hooray!” on the pasted-in printout.