U.S. Researchers Put Global Science Grid to the Test

Upton, NY and Batavia, IL—A global collaboration of physicists and computer scientists announced today the successful completion of a test of the first truly worldwide grid computing infrastructure. Researchers from two national laboratories and ten universities across the United States participated in the test, which saw data transferred around the world at a rate of up to one gigabyte per second.

Today’s scientific discoveries in many fields, including particle physics, require massive amounts of data and the dedication of thousands of researchers. Grid computing transforms the way such scientists plan and conduct research. The current test is a crucial step on the way to making data from the Large Hadron Collider, the world’s largest scientific instrument, available to scientists worldwide when the accelerator begins operating in 2007 at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland. In the current months-long test, or “service challenge,” data were transferred from CERN to 12 major computing centers around the globe, including Brookhaven National Laboratory and Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, and to more than 20 other computing facilities, ten of which are located at U.S. universities.

“This breakthrough for scientific grid computing comes after years of work by the U.S. particle physics and grid computing communities,” said Saul Gonzalez, associate program manager for U.S. LHC computing at the Office of High Energy Physics in the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science. “The computing centers at Fermilab and Brookhaven have shown that they’re up to the monumental task of receiving and storing terabytes of data from the LHC and serving that data to hundreds of physicists across the United States.”

Focusing on the broader implications of the achievement, Miriam Heller from the National Science Foundation’s Office of Cyberinfrastructure added, “The results of this challenge aren’t just vital for the U.S. and international particle physics community. They also signal the kinds of broad impacts in science, engineering and society in general that can be achieved with shared cyberinfrastructure.”

The global grid infrastructure, organized by the Worldwide LHC Computing Grid collaboration (WLCG), is built from international, regional and national grids such as the Open Science Grid (OSG) in the United States and Enabling Grids for E-SciencE (EGEE) in Europe. Making multiple grids and networks such as the OSG and the EGEE work together as a comprehensive global grid service is one of the biggest challenges for the WLCG.

“Previously, components of a full grid service have been tested on a limited set of resources, a bit like testing the engines or wings of a plane separately,” said Jos Engelen, the Chief Scientific Officer of CERN, commenting from the conference on Computing for High Energy and Nuclear Physics 2006 in Mumbai, India, where the results were announced. “This latest service challenge was the equivalent of a maiden flight for LHC computing. For the first time, several sites in Asia were also involved in this service challenge, making it truly global in scope. Another first was that real physics data was shipped, stored and processed under conditions similar to those expected when scientists start recording results from the LHC.”

In the United States the OSG, together with Brookhaven, Fermilab and other collaborating institutions, provides computational, storage and network resources to fully exploit the scientific potential of two of the major LHC experiments: ATLAS and CMS.

“Much of the data analysis that will lead to scientific discoveries will be performed by the hundreds of particle physicists at U.S. universities,” said Moishe Pripstein from the NSF’s Math and Physical Sciences Division. “University scientists have ramped up their contributions to US CMS and US ATLAS computing, with many already making a significant contribution to the current challenge. The challenge is a remarkable achievement and serves as an important reality check, demonstrating how much work there is yet to be done.”

Brookhaven’s computing facility, which serves as the Tier-1 center for the US ATLAS collaboration, received data at a rate higher than 150 megabytes per second from CERN. The data was then distributed to Tier-2 computing centers at Boston University, Indiana University, the University of Chicago and the University of Texas at Arlington at an aggregate rate of 20 megabytes per second.

“Every LHC discovery about the fundamental properties of matter or the origins of the universe will represent hundreds of users accessing millions of gigabytes of data for analysis,” said Bruce Gibbard from Brookhaven National Laboratory. “We’re well on our way to providing a reliable grid infrastructure to enable research at the forefront of physics.”

Fermilab, the Tier-1 center for the US CMS collaboration, has already set records in data transfer from its computing center to CERN. In this challenge, Fermilab tested its brand-new connections to six Tier-2 centers: Caltech; Purdue University; the University of California, San Diego; the University of Florida; the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Fermilab received data from CERN, archived it and replicated 50 terabytes to the Tier-2 centers where it was stored and retrieved for analysis-all using grid tools and infrastructure.

“This challenge was a learning experience for all of US CMS computing, and for the Tier-2 sites in particular,” said Ken Bloom from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Tier-2 coordinator for US CMS. “It was the largest and broadest test we have ever done of our computing capabilities, and, for some of the US Tier-2 sites, the first major interaction with the broader world of LHC computing, yet the six participating sites were among the leaders in the service challenge.”

Notes for Editors
Brookhaven National Laboratory is operated and managed for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science by Brookhaven Science Associates, a limited-liability company founded by Stony Brook University, the largest academic user of Laboratory facilities, and Battelle, a nonprofit applied science and technology organization.

Fermilab is operated by Universities Research Association, Inc., a consortium of 90 research universities, for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science.

Further information about the grid infrastructures involved can be found at:
Enabling Grids for E-SciencE (EGEE): http://public.eu-egee.org/
Open Science Grid (OSG): http://www.opensciencegrid.org/
Worldwide LHC Computing Grid (WLCG): http://www.cern.ch/lcg/

Thursday, December 1, 2005, from 5:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. CST

Batavia, Ill.—“The Late Show with Leon Lederman” is one of many highlights of a 12-hour live Webcast produced by the European laboratory CERN, the U.S. Department of Energy’s Fermilab and other partners, including physics laboratories, science museums and technology partners. The Web cast, with contributions from around the globe, will celebrate Albert Einstein and look beyond the World Year of Physics 2005. The Webcast will take place on December 1 from 5:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. CST. The public will have access to the entire Webcast from the Fermilab homepage at www.fnal.gov.

Nobel laureate and former Fermilab director Lederman will host his show from 2:00-3:30 p.m. live from Fermilab. The show will feature interviews with young physicists, fun physics demonstrations and live music. Journalists interested in attending the live filming of the show at Fermilab should contact Kurt Riesselmann in Fermilab’s Office of Public Affairs at kurtr@fnal.gov or call 630-840-5681. The program of the entire Webcast is available at www.cern.ch/beyondeinstein/
The 12-hour Webcast will be broadcast live on the Internet from several locations. The main Webcast studio will be located in the CERN Globe of Science and Innovation in Geneva, Switzerland. Other locations around the world are connected via videoconference: the Telecom Future Centre (Venice), Imperial College London, Fermilab (Batavia, Illinois), the Exploratorium (San Francisco) hosting scientists from the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, the Bloomfield Science Museum (Jerusalem) and the National Science Education Centre (Taipei).

From the seven main platforms, “internauts” will be taken on a world tour to physics laboratories and science museums, visiting virtually all the time zones of the planet, from Europe to America, from Asia to Tasmania and as far south as Antarctica.

The program includes subjects such as relativity, gravitational waves, mass and gravity, antimatter and neutrinos, along with the mysteries remaining in Einstein’s physics, and the technologies derived from it. A global audience will be able to discuss the impact of Einstein’s discoveries and look beyond them with top-level physicists such as Stephen Hawking and Paul Davies, and with physics Nobel laureates David Gross, Murray Gell-Mann and Gerard ‘t Hooft, connected from the 2005 Solvay physics Conference in Brussels (10:10 CST).

Einstein was also a refugee, and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) will discuss the positive contribution refugees can make to their society of adoption.

Peter Kirstein from University College London, who was instrumental in the Internet’s early evolution, will be joined by fellow Internet pioneer Bob Kahn, and Robert Cailliau who played a key role at the birth of the Web, to explore the role that basic science plays in the evolution of information technology.

Other highlights include the award ceremony of the Pirelli Relativity Challenge from the Telecom Future Centre in Venice (8:30 CST), and an online quiz for 15 to 19 year-olds. Based on three top mysteries stemming from Einstein’s theories, this competition will offer Apple iBook and Apple iPod prizes to the winners.

Watch the live Webcast and take part in the online quiz on
Thursday, December 1, 2005
5:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. CST
http://www.cern.ch/beyondeinstein

The Beyond Einstein partners will be available to answer the press and media questions at a dedicated preview event on the Web on Monday 28 November at 17:00 CET. Join from http://www.cern.ch/beyondeinstein/press

For more information on the Webcast contact:

Fermilab program: kurtr@fnal.gov, phone: 630-840-5681
General information: paola.catapano@cern.ch phone: +41 76 487 36 17
Technical information: silvano.de.gennaro@cern.ch phone: +41 76 487 41 38

Journalists wishing to join the Web press event on November 28 should contact: neil.calder@SLAC.Stanford.EDU

Journalists wishing to join the event in the CERN Globe of Science and Innovation in Geneva on December 1 should contact: Renilde.Vanden.Broeck@cern.ch

Additional media contacts:

Imperial College London:
David Colling, d.colling@imperial.ac.uk, +44 777619 63 61
National Science Education Center Taipei:
Paoti Chang, pchang@phys.ntu.edu.tw, +886 2 33665151
Pirelli Relativity Challenge:
Massimo Armeni, massimo.armeni@pirelli.com, +39 06 69517610
Stanford Linear Accelerator Center:
Neil Calder, neil.calder@SLAC.Stanford.EDU, +1 650-926-8707
The 2005 Solvay Conference in Physics, Brussels:
Marc Henneaux, henneaux@ulb.ac.be, +32 2 650 5423 – 5816
The Bloomfield Science Museum Jerusalem:
Varda Gur Ben Shitrit, varda@mada.org.il, +972-2-6544884
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees:
Martine Pochon, pochon@unhcr.org, +41 22 7397738
The Exploratorium, San Francisco:
Linda Dackman, lindad@exploratorium.edu, +1-415-561-0363
World Year of Physics International Steering Committee:
Ophelia Fornari, o.fornari@eps.org, +33 3 89 32 94 48

Fermilab is a national laboratory funded by the Office of Science of the U.S. Department of Energy, operated by Universities Research Association, Inc.

MALARGÜE, Argentina — Scientists of the Pierre Auger Observatory, a project to discover the origins of rare and mysterious ultra-high energy cosmic rays, began a celebration today (November 10) in Malargüe, Argentina, to mark the progress on installation of the Observatory’s detectors on the Argentina Pampas, and the presentation of the first physics results.

“These highest-energy cosmic rays are messengers from the extreme universe. They represent a great opportunity for discoveries,” said Nobel Prize winner James Cronin, of the University of Chicago, who conceived the Auger experiment together with Alan Watson of the University of Leeds (UK). Watson added: “How does nature create the conditions to accelerate a tiny particle to such an energy? Tracking these ultrahigh-energy particles back to their sources will answer that question.”

The opening symposium includes presentations on the origins of the project, the construction, and the first science results. Guided tours of the Observatory will be given on Friday, November 11. The events will conclude on Saturday, November 12, with a science fair featuring participants from local schools.

“It is a great pleasure for the Atomic Energy Commission of Argentina to participate in the celebration of the Pierre Auger Project in Malargüe,” said Dr. Cristina Combiaggio, Director of Centro Atomico Constituyentes of CNEA (Comision Nacional de Energia Atomica). “We are very proud of having been able to collaborate with the Project from the very beginning, assuming its leadership in our country, and we commit ourselves to continue providing support.”

The Observatory collaboration includes more than 370 scientists and engineers from 60 institutions in 16 countries, and the construction cost of approximately $50 million has been shared by the participating countries. The Department of Energy Office of Science and the National Science Foundation have combined for approximately $10 million in funding, and the collaboration includes 14 universities in the US. The Observatory also has spawned several high-school based research efforts to study cosmic rays, offering an opportunity for high school students and teachers to be actively involved in cosmic ray research with university mentors.

Said Dr. Robin Staffin, DOE Associate Director of Science for High Energy Physics: “The Pierre Auger Observatory focuses on understanding fundamental and exciting questions in astroparticle physics that are of central importance to the Department of Energy’s Office of Science. We are very pleased that the project’s US collaborators include 14 American research universities in addition to Fermilab, which is providing management and infrastructure support with its extensive experience in managing large international research projects.”

“The Auger scientists have set out on a great scientific adventure, the mystery of Nature’s highest energy particles — where did they come from and how did Nature accelerate them,” said Dr. Michael Turner, NSF Assistant Director, Mathematical and Physical Sciences. “Individual elementary particles carry as much energy as a well-hit baseball. Solving this riddle may cast light on the origins of the Universe and the unification of the forces of Nature as well. Auger also established a new model for international collaboration, with scientists from 16 countries brought together by a compelling problem to build a collaboration from the bottom up. Congratulations to all and happy hunting!”

The Pierre Auger Observatory is trying to solve the mystery of the origins of extremely rare high-energy cosmic rays — charged particles showering the earth at energies above 10¹⁹ electron volts, about 10 million times higher than the energy of the world’s highest-energy particle accelerator, the Tevatron at Fermilab. To witness these extremely rare events, the observatory is constructing an array of 1600 detectors spread over 3000 square kilometers in Argentina’s Mendoza Province, just east of the Andes Mountains. Each detector contains 3000 gallons of ultra-pure, de-ionized water. These “Cerenkov detectors” discern the presence of charged particles by measuring the Cerenkov radiation, or electromagnetic shock waves, produced when the particles move through the water faster than the speed of light in the water. The effect is analogous to shock waves generated in the atmosphere by planes flying at supersonic speeds. Information from the detectors is transmitted by solar-powered cellular phone technology.

The detector array covers an area approximately the size of the state of Rhode Island in the United States. Surrounding the array is a set of 24 telescopes which, on clear moonless nights, observe the ultraviolet fluorescence produced as cosmic ray shower particles travel through the atmosphere. While a northern hemisphere site has not yet been funded, the collaboration is working to establish a northern hemisphere partner of the southern observatory, likely to be based in southeastern Colorado in the US. With observatories in both hemispheres, the Auger collaboration will have the opportunity to view cosmic rays across the entire universe, from every direction.

The first physics results from the Pierre Auger Observatory include a new cosmic ray spectrum at the highest energies, the results of anisotropy and point source searches, and new limits on the photon content of the primaries which could address several points within exotic theories of cosmic ray origin. The significance of these results:

• The Observatory charts a spectrum by measuring the observed cosmic rays as a function of energy. As the energy of the cosmic rays increases, the experiment is seeing fewer and fewer of them. Auger observes cosmic rays at energies as high as any other experiment has ever seen, if not higher, examining this high energy range for interesting phenomena — which might or might not exist.
• Cosmic rays generally are charged particles. Lower-energy rays are greatly affected by galactic magnetic fields, taking twisted and distorted paths to earth. High-energy rays, less affected by magnetic fields, take a more direct path to earth. If experimenters see more rays from one direction than from another (anisotropy), they can refine their observations to include point source searches, tracking back fairly closely to a point source or an object in the sky.
• Scientists want to know the makeup of the primaries, the cosmic ray particles that initially strike the earth’s atmosphere, creating further collisions with air molecules that eventually produce a cascade of particles called an extensive air shower. Is the primary a proton, an atomic nucleus, or a photon? Researchers have determined experimentally that the makeup of primaries cannot exceed a specific fraction (a limit) of photons, which will eventually affect their thinking on some exotic theories of cosmic ray origins.
• These exotic theories include hypothetical objects left over from the Big Bang, called topological defects, such as “cosmic strings,” “domain walls,” and “monopoles.” If these hypothetical phenomena existed, and then collapsed, their collapses could produce enough energy to create very high-energy cosmic rays. If so, then a certain fraction of cosmic rays would consist of photons. So far, the data is not extensive enough to prove or disprove any of these phenomena. But enlarging the data set over time will help Auger scientists narrow down the many different theories of cosmic ray origin.

The Pierre Auger Cosmic Ray Observatory is named for French scientist Pierre Victor Auger (1899-1993), who in 1938 was the first to observe the extensive air showers generated by the interaction of very-high-energy cosmic rays with the earth’s atmosphere.

Fermilab, which hosts the project management office for the Pierre Auger Observatory, is a U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science national laboratory, operated under contract by Universities Research Association, Inc. DOE and NSF have designated URA as the US representative on the project’s international oversight board, currently chaired by URA President Fred Bernthal.

More information on Pierre Auger Cosmic Ray Observatory, including visual overview and interview with Nobel Laureate James Cronin: http://www.auger.org/

Pierre Auger Observatory Images: http://www.auger.org/observatory/2004.html

Pierre Auger Observatory Celebration website: http://www.interactions.org/auger/

Auger Observatory Collaborating Institutions by Country

Argentina
Instituto Balseiro, Centro Atómico Bariloche – Comisión Nacional de Energía Atómica y Universidad Nacional de Cuyo
Instituto de Astronomía y Física del Espacio – CONICET
Instituto de Física de La Plata – Universidad Nacional de la Plata y CONICET
Laboratorio TANDAR – Comisión Nacional de Energía Atómica
Universidad Tecnologica Nacional – Regionales Mendoza & San Rafael

Australia
University of Adelaide

Bolivia
Universidad Catolica de Bolivia
Universidad Mayor de San Andres

Brazil
CBPF-Centro Brasileiro de Pesquisas Fisicas
Universidade Estadual de Feira de Santana – Bahia
Universidade Estadual do Sudoeste da Bahia
Universidade Federal da Bahia
Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro
Universidade Federal Fluminense
Universidade de Sao Paulo
Universidade Estadual de Campinas

Czech Republic
Institute of Physics of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic
Institute of Particle and Nuclear Physics, Charles University Prague

France
Institut de Physique Nucléaire,Orsay, and IN2P3-CNRS
Laboratoire de l’Accélérateur Linéaire,Orsay, and IN2P3-CNRS
Laboratoire AstroParticule et Cosmologie du Collège de France, and IN2P3-CNRS
Laboratoire de Physique Nucléaire et de Hautes Energies, Université Paris 6, and IN2P3-CNRS

Germany
Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe-Institut für Kernphysik
Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe-Institut für Prozessdatenveratbeitung und Elektronik
Max Planck-Institut für Radioastronomie and Universität Bonn associated by Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe Institut für Kernphysik
Rheinisch-Westfälische Technische Hochschule Aachen
Universität Karlsruhe
Universität Siegen
Bergische Universität Wuppertal

Italy
Dipartimento di Fisica dell’Università and INFN, L’Aquila
Dipartimento di Fisica dell’Università and Sezione INFN, Lecce
Dipartimento di Fisica dell’Università and Sezione INFN, Milano
Dipartimento di Fisica dell’Università and Sezione INFN, Napoli
Dipartimento di Fisica dell’Università di Roma “Tor Vergata” and Sezione INFN Roma II
Dipartimento di Fisica Sperimentale dell’Università and Sezione INFN, Torino
Istituto di Fisica dello Spazio Interplanetario (INAF), Dipartimento di Fisica Generale dell’Università and Sezione INFN, Torino
Sezione INFN di Catania & Dipartimento di Fisica e Astronomia dell’Università, Catania
INFN, Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso

Mexico
Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla
Centro de Investigacion y de Estudios Avanzados del IPN
Universidad Michoacana de San Nicolás de Hidalgo
Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México

Netherlands
Stichting Astronomisch Onderzoek in Nederland (ASTRON), Dwingeloo
Institute for Mathematics, Astrophysics and Particle Physics (IMAPP), Radboud Universiteit, Nijmegen
Kernfysisch Verneller Instituut (KVI), Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, Groningen
Nationaal Instituut voor Kernfysica en Hoge Energie Fysica (NIKHEF), Nijmegen

Poland
Department of Experimental Physics, University of Lodz
Institute of Nuclear Physics, Krakow

Slovenia
Nova Gorica Polytechnic

Spain
Departamento de Fisica de Particulas, Universidad de Santiago de Compostela
Universidad Complutense de Madrid
Centro de Supercomputacíon de Galicia
Universidad de Alcalá de Henares

United Kingdom
Oxford University
University of Leeds

USA
Case Western Reserve University
Clemson University
Colorado State University
Columbia University
Fermilab National Accelerator Laboratory / Argonne National Laboratory
Louisiana State University/Southern University
Michigan Technological University
Northeastern University
Ohio State University
Pennsylvania State University
University of California, Los Angeles
University of Chicago
University of Colorado
University of Minnesota
University of Nebraska
University of New Mexico
University of Utah

Auger Observatory Funding Agencies by Country

UNESCO

Argentina
La Provincia de Mendoza
Comision Nacional de Energía Atómica
Fundacion Antorchas

Australia
The Australian Research Council

Brazil
Fundacao de Amparo a Pesquisa do Estado de Sao Paulo (FAPESP)
Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Cientifico e Tecnologico (CNPq)
Financiadora de Estudos e Projetos do Ministerio dA Ciencia e Tecnologia (FINEP/MCT)

Czech Republic
Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports of the Czech Republic

France
Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)
Département Sciences de l’Univers (SDU-INSU/CNRS)
Département Physique Nucléaire et Corpusculaire (PNC-IN2P3/CNRS)
Conseil Régional Ile-de-France

Germany
Helmholtz-Gemeinschaft Deutscher Forschungszentren
Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung (BMBF), Germany
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft DFG
Finanzministerium Baden-Württemberg
Ministerium für Wissenschaft und Forschung, Nordrhein Westfalen

Italy
Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN)
Ministero dell’Istruzione, dell’Università e della Ricerca (MIUR)

Mexico
Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología

Netherlands
Ministerie van Onderwijs, Cultuur en Wetenschap
Stichting voor Fundamenteel Onderzoek der Materie (FOM)
Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (NWO)

Poland
Ministry of Science and Information Society Technologies

Slovenia
Slovenian Research Agency
Ministry for Higher Education, Science, and Technology

Spain
Ministerio de Educacíon y Ciencia
Xunta de Galicia
FEDER funds
Consejería de Educacíon de la Comunidad de Castilla La Mancha

United Kingdom
Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council

United States
Department of Energy
National Science Foundation
The Grainger Foundation

BATAVIA, Illinois—When children go to the zoo, or to a museum, or watch a Space Shuttle launch, they want to talk about their experience, and they’re excited about describing what they’ve seen. Science literacy is a critical skill in a world of constantly accelerating technology, and the Department of Energy’s Fermilab Education Office is marking Illinois State Library Family Reading Day with a science-based Family Literacy Experience for Grades K-8 on Thursday, November 17, 2005.

The program will be held in the Leon Lederman Science Education Center, with grade-appropriate sessions running from 3:30 p.m. to 7:15 p.m. Parents will join their children in using hands-on, exemplary science program materials that integrate reading skills and encourage reading. Sessions will be led by local educators in the areas of both science and literacy.

Susan Dahl, manager of teacher resources in the Fermilab Education Office and coordinator for the literacy event, observes that the focus of science instruction at the preschool and elementary levels is on organizing and classifying aspects of nature—the same skills used in organizing and classifying as children learn words in reading and language instruction. At the middle school level, science instruction is focused on analyzing and comparing aspects of nature—just as reading and language instruction is focused on analyzing and comparing ideas.

“Research tells us that we need a context to read effectively, or our brains will discard the words we are reading,” says Dahl. “We want to broaden the idea of literacy. These hands-on science activities, what we call ‘inquiry science,’ will reinforce what children are reading. Parents often ask, ‘How can I help my child learn?’ Here we are offering strategies that can provide substantial help at home. Children will be reading to learn, instead of learning to read.”

The session for Grade PreK is 3:30 p.m. to 4:15 p.m.; for Grades K-1, and Grades 2-3, 4:45 p.m. to 5:45 p.m.; for Grades 4-5, and Grades 6-8, 6:15 p.m. to 7:15 p.m. There will be some cool raffle items for each grade level, and some for parents too. If your family has children in several grades, come to more than one session. Snacks will be available between sessions.

The fee for the Family Literacy Experience is $12 per child with adult companion. To register, first go to www-ed.fnal.gov; then choose “Science Adventures,” and then click on “Family Literacy Experience.”

Fermilab is a Department of Energy Office of Science national laboratory, operated under contract by Universities Research Association Inc.

BATAVIA, Illinois—Preparing for an onslaught of data to be processed and distributed in the upcoming years, scientists at the Department of Energy’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory and at the California Institute of Technology successfully tested a new ultrafast data transfer connection developed by the Office of Science of the Department of Energy.

The new DOE UltraScience Net, which allows for the development and testing of dynamically switched fiber-optic links with speeds of up to 20 Gigabits per second, connects cities such as Atlanta, Chicago, Seattle, and Sunnyvale, CA. In a recent test, the transfer of data from a system at Fermilab to a system at Caltech achieved a rate of 7 Gigabits per second, over 15 times faster than with a comparable production Energy Science Network, and thousands of times faster than the usual high-speed Internet connections at private residences.

“With the UltraScience Net, the Department of Energy is at the leading edge of high-speed and high-capacity network research for science applications in the country,” said Fermilab’s Matt Crawford, who led the effort of connecting Fermilab to the Chicago node of the UltraScience Net. “Fermilab is among the first users of the UltraScience Net.”

The UltraScience Net was developed under the leadership of scientists at DOE’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

“About two years ago, we looked at various needs for high-speed networking capabilities within the Department of Energy’s science program,” said ORNL’s Nageswara Rao, one of the principal investigators of the UltraScience Net. “From terascale supernova simulations to visualization of genomics data to data from particle collisions, there is a demand for stable, dedicated, high-bandwidth connections to exchange data. With the UltraScience Net, research institutions can book a connection, and nobody can interfere with your circuit while you transfer data at high speed.”

Institutions wanting to use the UltraScience Net are responsible for developing and establishing the links from their sites to the nodes of the UltraScience Net, known as the “last-mile problem.” During the early stage of the UltraScience Net, scientists had to reserve a connection using a Web-based system, and network specialists on both ends of the connection had to manually establish the link at the corresponding time. Since then Fermilab’s network computing experts have developed an automated system called Lambda Station. As its first application, the system automatically can connect computers across Fermilab’s local network with the UltraScience Net when a connection is available.

“The DOE UltraScience Net enables us to think cleverly about networks. We thought of a way to use these ultraspeed channels when they are available, and do without them when they are not,” said Fermilab’s Don Petravick, principal investigator of the Lambda Station project. “The Lambda Station system automatically coordinates the local networks and applications, dynamically assigning network channels using both shared networks and dedicated pipelines. It is a clever package we developed using the wonderful infrastructure provided by the UltraScience Net.”

The successful test of the UltraScience Net and the Lambda Station system is an important milestone for US particle physicists involved in experiments at the Large Hadron Collider, currently under construction at the European laboratory CERN, in Switzerland. In 2007, when the LHC begins producing data, Fermilab will assume the role of a Tier 1 computing center for the CMS experiment at the LHC. As part of its Tier 1 responsibilities, Fermilab will distribute vast amounts of data to universities and other CMS institutions (Tier 2 centers) for analysis.

“The LHC experiments produce large amounts of data, and there is a demand for large data flows among the participating institutions,” said US-CMS physicist, Collaboration Board chair and networking expert Harvey Newman of Caltech, who helped to develop and test the infrastructure of the Lambda Station project. “The UltraScience Net and the Lambda Station infrastructure are key technologies for supporting LHC science. Ultimately, we plan to make the Lambda Station infrastructure available to everybody in the science community who has large data-transfer needs and who has access to high-bandwidth networks.”

Further information is available at:
UltraScience Net: www.csm.ornl.gov/ultranet/
Lambda Station: www.lambdastation.org
CMS experiment at the LHC: http://cmsdoc.cern.ch/cms/outreach/html/

Fermilab is a national laboratory funded by the Office of Science of the U.S. Department of Energy, operated by Universities Research Association, Inc. Caltech’s HEP-related network and grid activities are funded by the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science and the National Science Foundation.

BATAVIA, Illinois—The Education Office of the Department of Energy’s Fermilab greets the new school year with another complete program of classroom presentations to celebrate the World Year of Physics, marking the 100th anniversary of Albert Einstein’s “Miraculous Year.”

“We reach many students throughout the area with our presentations each year,” said Susan Dahl of Fermilab’s Education Office, “but we’re hoping to reach even more as a way of celebrating the year in which Einstein published the four papers that forever changed the way we view our world.”

The age-appropriate World Year of Physics presentations, taught by Fermilab scientists and geared toward students from grades 2 through 12, are brought free of charge to classrooms, libraries and after-school programs, or to other informal science activities. From “Zap! Light and Color” (Grades 2-6) to “Space, Time and Einstein” (Grades 7-12), the presentations and presenters have made lasting impressions throughout Fermilab’s surrounding school communities.

“I was very pleased with Fermilab’s World Year of Physics presentations,” said Anne Barney of St. Peter’s school in Geneva, Illinois. “The presenters were very knowledgeable, well-prepared, and entertaining. The presentations, perfectly geared toward the student’s grade level, consisted of discussions, visual aids, and hands-on activities. The Fermilab WYoP presentations also introduced to the children a variety of careers in science.”

For fifth-grade teacher Sarah Garcia of Stevenson Elementary School in Melrose Park, Illinois, the classroom presentations even surpassed the experience of a field trip. “I have never seen any of my students so attentive and interested in any educational presentation before,” Garcia said. “They were eager to participate, and eager to show everyone else what they had learned. Our presenter was wonderful and tried to give every student a chance to participate. He even allowed the students to come up after the presentation and work with the demonstrations that they didn’t get to participate in. In my opinion, this was the best ‘field trip’ we had all year. I would highly recommend this to any teacher, and plan to ask Fermilab to come out again this year.”

Classroom presenters are scientists, engineers and technical experts who are dedicated to making educational connections with children in Fermilab’s surrounding communities. Senior scientist Michael Albrow offers “Space, Time and Einstein,” a topic which at first glance appears difficult to translate into hands-on activities: how does one demonstrate relativity? Hula hoops provided one answer.

“To demonstrate bending space, which is a general relativity principle, we had hula hoops with latex sheets stretched across them,” Albrow said. “In the center we placed a heavy steel ball that created a depression in the latex sheet, representing the gravitational welt, then we started a little ball going around and around in circles, heading down toward the big body. We had the kids holding the hula hoops, four kids to each hoop, and we gave no lecture—we just let them have fun.”

Scientist Don Lincoln, who offers “Forces and Motion” (Grades 4-8), noted the active participation, and the sense that the students found science interesting, with applications to their daily lives. “The kids had fun and they all were volunteering to be assistants,” Lincoln said. “They all were offering suggestions when we asked them what they thought would happen. The teachers were grateful to have scientists in the classrooms. With travel budgets so curtailed, this was an inexpensive alternative to a fieldtrip. I was really impressed with just how engaged the students and teachers were.”

The sense of engagement is also rewarding to presenters. Albrow described being touched by the thank-you messages sent from all the members of one class he had visited. “That made it all worthwhile, although it’s also icing on the cake,” he said. “We’re not trying to turn the kids into scientists. We would just like every kid to be exposed to the fun of physics, and to our enthusiasm. We want to show that girls can do science, too—that’s very important, that they can do what they’re interested in doing. And we want to show them how science works, that you always have to test an idea with an experiment.”

The World Year of Physics classroom presentations are offered free of charge to schools within an approximate radius of 90 minutes’ drive from the Fermilab site, which is 40 miles west of Chicago. A brochure with descriptions of all the offerings can be downloaded from the Education Office Website at: http://www-ed.fnal.gov/pdf/wyp_brochure.pdf. To schedule a classroom presentation, contact Nancy Lanning at 630-840-5588. For questions about the program or the presentations, contact Susan Dahl at 630-840-3094.

For more information on the World Year of Physics 2005, an international celebration of physics endorsed by the United Nations, go to: http://www.physics2005.org/

Fermilab is a U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science national laboratory, operated under contract by Universities Research Association, Inc.

BATAVIA, IL – Hundreds of scientists from the DZero collaboration at the Department of Energy’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory are using the technology of the future to process particle physics data today. Using grid computing, facilities in six countries around the globe have begun to provide computing power equivalent to 3,000 one-gigahertz Pentium III processors to crunch more experimental data than ever before. In six months, the computers will churn through 250 terabytes of data-enough to fill a stack of CDs as high as France’s Eiffel Tower.

“We’re using the grid to process three years’ worth of data-one billion particle collisions-in six months,” said Fermilab guest scientist Daniel Wicke, on leave from the University of Wuppertal, Germany, who heads the reprocessing effort. “DZero has a long history of using computing resources from outside Fermilab, including a project in 2003 to send a much smaller amount of data off-site for reprocessing. We knew that this much bigger effort, remotely processing ten times more collisions than before using five times the number of computers, would be possible.”

As new data is recorded with the DZero detector at the Tevatron, the world’s highest-energy particle accelerator located in Batavia, IL, it is processed into a form useable by physicists. The cluster of one thousand computer processors dedicated to DZero computing at Fermilab is kept busy processing the newly acquired data.

“The DZero computer farm can process about four million events per day,” said Mike Diesburg, who manages the farm. “At Fermilab, we process data in real time, so even with no new data coming in it would take three years to reprocess three years’ worth of data. To do it in six months we need to look for computing resources all over the world.”

A reprocessing of stored data is necessary when physicists and computer scientists have made significant advances. Researchers are constantly trying to optimize the software to process each collision event faster, and physicists’ understanding of the complex DZero detector is also steadily improving.

“Our scientists are always thinking up new ideas; better ways to calibrate detectors or track particles,” said DZero spokesperson Jerry Blazey. “We wait until many of those ideas have been incorporated into the software and then do a reprocessing. The reprocessed data will improve the full physics program, including detection of top quarks and other elementary particles, and searches for the Higgs boson and new phenomena like supersymmetry.”

As each collision event is processed, the software pulls additional information from large databases, requiring several complex auxiliary systems to work well together at all times. This system then has to be adapted to run on computer systems in many different environments, with many different configurations. Researchers at Fermilab and the participating institutions have been working for almost a year to ensure that the current reprocessing runs smoothly.

“The reprocessing effort pushes the limits of our software and infrastructure so that we can get the most physics out of the data collected by the DZero detector,” said Dugan O’Neil of Simon Fraser University, a participant in the WestGrid collaboration. “The grid allows DZero to make better use of remote human resources as well as computing power. Participating in the reprocessing is an important technical contribution for our group, and it also gives us the experience needed to figure out how to efficiently analyze data remotely.”

Canada’s WestGrid, the University of Texas at Arlington, CCIN2P3 in Lyon, France and FZU in the Czech Republic are the first collaborating sites remotely reprocessing DZero data. Computing centers and grid projects at the University of Oklahoma, GridKa in Germany, and GridPP and PPARC in the U.K. will soon follow. Fermilab scientists hope to eventually add collaborating sites in Brazil, India, Korea and China.

Institutions that have not traditionally collaborated on the DZero experiment also contribute to the reprocessing. The University of Wisconsin is currently contributing computing power, and Fermilab resources primarily dedicated to the CMS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN will soon begin reprocessing. Ultimately, researchers hope to use resources distributed over several international grids, including the Open Science Grid and LHC Computing Grid.

The DZero experiment is a collaboration of about 650 scientists from over 80 institutions in the U.S. and 19 foreign countries. For a list of collaborating institutions, please visit the DZero web site.

Fermilab is operated by Universities Research Association, Inc., a consortium of 90 research universities, for the United States Department of Energy’s Office of Science.

Batavia, IL – Today, in a milestone for scientific computing, researchers at the Department of Energy’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory announced that the laboratory had sustained a continuous data flow averaging 50 megabytes per second (MB/s) for 25 days from CERN in Geneva, Switzerland to the tape storage facility at Fermilab. Fermilab and six other major global computing centers sustained a continuous data flow averaging 600 MB/s from CERN to tape and disk storage at locations around the world. The total amount of data transmitted in 10 days-500 terabytes-would take about 250 years to download using a typical 512 kilobit per second household broadband connection.

The achievements represented a successful exercise designed to test the global grid computing infrastructure that will be used by thousands of scientists worldwide working on experiments at the Large Hadron Collider, currently being built at CERN to study the fundamental properties of subatomic particles and forces.

“This service challenge is a key step on the way to managing the torrents of data anticipated from the LHC,” said Jamie Shiers, coordinator of the service challenges at CERN. “When the LHC starts operating in 2007, it will be the most data-intensive physics instrument on the planet, producing more than 1500 MB/s of data continuously for over a decade.”

When the LHC begins operations, one copy of all of the particle physics data collected with the ALICE, ATLAS, CMS and LHCb experiments will be stored at CERN. A second copy will be distributed among eight global computing centers. Fermilab and other centers will need to store data on tape at rates of over 150 MB/s using global high-speed computer networks. The goal is to allow researchers easy access to the experimental data from the CERN experiments, wherever their home institutions are located.

“The further away the source of data and the recipient are, the harder it is to transfer data successfully,” said Don Petravick, Head of the Computation and Communications Fabric Department of Fermilab’s Computing Division. “At Fermilab, we demonstrated that we could accept huge data sets under demanding networking conditions.”

The current service challenge is the second in a series of four leading up to LHC operations in 2007. The service challenge participants included Fermilab and Brookhaven National Laboratory in the U.S., Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe in Germany, CNAF in Italy, CCIN2P3 in France, SARA/NIKHEF in the Netherlands and Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in the U.K.

Fermilab Computing Division head Vicky White welcomed the results of the challenge.

“High energy physicists have been transmitting large amounts of data around the world for years,” White said. “But this has usually been in relatively brief bursts and between two sites. Sustaining such high rates of data for days on end to multiple sites is a breakthrough, and augurs well for achieving the ultimate goals of LHC computing.”

During LHC operation, Fermilab will receive data from CERN. In turn, Fermilab will provide an interface between scientists at U.S universities working on the CMS experiment and the data collected by the experiment in Geneva. The current service challenge was the first to connect Fermilab to computing centers at four universities-the University of California, San Diego, the California Institute of Technology, the University of Florida and Purdue University-participating in the LHC global computing infrastructure. When completed in 2007, seven university computing facilities, each with about 100 computer nodes and 200 terabytes of disk space, will connect to Fermilab through this infrastructure.

“This service challenge was a first step toward our participation in the global LHC computing effort,” said Purdue University physicist Norbert Neumeister, who coordinated his institution’s participation in the exercise. “University centers will need to provide access to LHC physics data for the over 200 U.S. scientists participating in the CMS experiment. This was a good check for us as we ramp up our efforts toward full capacity in 2007.”

The next service challenge, due to start in the summer, will extend to more computing centers in the U.S. and globally, and will include more data management and experiment-specific tasks.

Fermilab is operated by Universities Research Association, Inc., a consortium of 90 research universities, for the United States Department of Energy’s Office of Science.

Italian, US cosmologists present alternate explanation for accelerating expansion of the universe: Was Einstein right when he said he was wrong?

Why is the universe expanding at an accelerating rate, spreading its contents over ever greater dimensions of space? An original solution to this puzzle, certainly the most fascinating question in modern cosmology, was put forward by four theoretical physicists, Edward W. Kolb of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, Chicago (USA): Sabino Matarrese of the University of Padova; Alessio Notari from McGill University (Canada); and Antonio Riotto of INFN (Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare) of Padova (Italy). Their study was submitted yesterday to the journal Physical Review Letters.

Over the last hundred years, the expansion of the universe has been a subject of passionate discussion, engaging the most brilliant minds of the century. Like his contemporaries, Albert Einstein initially thought that the universe was static: that it neither expanded nor shrank. When his own Theory of General Relativity clearly showed that the universe should expand or contract, Einstein chose to introduce a new ingredient into his theory. His “cosmological constant” represented a mass density of empty space that drove the universe to expand at an ever-increasing rate.

When in 1929 Edwin Hubble proved that the universe is in fact expanding, Einstein repudiated his cosmological constant, calling it “the greatest blunder of my life.” Then, almost a century later, physicists resurrected the cosmological constant in a variant called dark energy. In 1998, observations of very distant supernovae demonstrated that the universe is expanding at an accelerating rate. This accelerating expansion seemed to be explicable only by the presence of a new component of the universe, a “dark energy,” representing some 70 percent of the total mass of the universe. Of the rest, about 25 percent appears to be in the form of another mysterious component, dark matter; while only about 5 percent comprises ordinary matter, those quarks, protons, neutrons and electrons that we and the galaxies are made of.

“The hypothesis of dark energy is extremely fascinating,” explains Padova’s Antonio Riotto, “but on the other hand it represents a serious problem. No theoretical model, not even the most modern, such as supersymmetry or string theory, is able to explain the presence of this mysterious dark energy in the amount that our observations require. If dark energy were the size that theories predict, the universe would have expanded with such a fantastic velocity that it would have prevented the existence of everything we know in our cosmos.”

The requisite amount of dark energy is so difficult to reconcile with the known laws of nature that physicists have proposed all manner of exotic explanations, including new forces, new dimensions of spacetime, and new ultralight elementary particles. However, the new report proposes no new ingredient for the universe, only a realization that the present acceleration of the universe is a consequence of the standard cosmological model for the early universe: inflation.

“Our solution to the paradox posed by the accelerating universe,” Riotto says, “relies on the so-called inflationary theory, born in 1981. According to this theory, within a tiny fraction of a second after the Big Bang, the universe experienced an incredibly rapid expansion. This explains why our universe seems to be very homogeneous. Recently, the Boomerang and WMAP experiments, which measured the small fluctuations in the background radiation originating with the Big Bang, confirmed inflationary theory.

It is widely believed that during the inflationary expansion early in the history of the universe, very tiny ripples in spacetime were generated, as predicted by Einstein’s theory of General Relativity. These ripples were stretched by the expansion of the universe and extend today far beyond our cosmic horizon, that is over a region much bigger than the observable universe, a distance of about 15 billion light years. In their current paper, the authors propose that it is the evolution of these cosmic ripples that increases the observed expansion of the universe and accounts for its acceleration.

“We realized that you simply need to add this new key ingredient, the ripples of spacetime generated during the epoch of inflation, to Einstein’s General Relativity to explain why the universe is accelerating today,” Riotto says. “It seems that the solution to the puzzle of acceleration involves the universe beyond our cosmic horizon. No mysterious dark energy is required.”

Fermilab’s Kolb called the authors’ proposal the most conservative explanation for the accelerating universe. “It requires only a proper accounting of the physical effects of the ripples beyond our cosmic horizon,” he said.

Data from upcoming experiments will allow cosmologists to test the proposal.

“Whether Einstein was right when he first introduced the cosmological constant, or whether he was right when he later refuted the idea will soon be tested by a new round of precision cosmological observations,” Kolb said. “New data will soon allow us to distinguish between our explanation for the accelerated expansion of the universe and the dark energy solution.”

INFN (Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare), Italy’s national nuclear physics institute, supports, coordinates and carries out scientific research in subnuclear, nuclear and astroparticle physics and is involved in developing relevant technologies.

Fermilab, in Batavia, Illinois, USA, is operated by Universities Research Association, Inc. for the Department of Energy’s Office of Science, which funds advanced research in particle physics and cosmology.

For further information:
Antonio Riotto, Infn of Padova
phone: +39 049 827 7256 (office), + 39 041 24 11 208 (home), mob. +39 320 486 2153
e-mail: antonio.riotto@pd.infn.it

Sabino Matarrese, University of Padova
phone: +39 049 827 7120 (office), +39 0444 92 36 48 (home)
e-mail: sabino.matarrese@pd.infn.it

Edward Kolb, Fermilab
+630 651 4695
email: rocky@fnal.gov

Barbara Gallavotti, Head of the Infn Comunication Office
phone: + 39 06 6868162; mob. + 39 335 6606075
e-mail: Barbara.Gallavotti@Presid.infn.it

BATAVIA, Illinois – Officials at the Department of Energy’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory today (March 4, 2005) dedicated the MINOS experiment and the beam that will send subatomic particles called neutrinos from Fermilab, near Chicago, to a particle detector in Minnesota. The Honorable J. Dennis Hastert Jr., Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, and Dr. Raymond L. Orbach, Director of the DOE Office of Science, officially inaugurated the Main Injector Neutrino Oscillation Search (MINOS) experiment. The Speaker unveiled the beam to send the first pulses of neutrinos on a path through the earth from Fermilab to a detector located 450 miles away, a half-mile underground in the historic Soudan iron mine in northeastern of Minnesota.

“With the MINOS experiment, Fermilab again demonstrates its position as the world’s premier facility to conduct particle physics research,” Rep. Hastert said. “With the new knowledge it generates on neutrinos, Fermilab will expand the frontiers of understanding about our universe and the way it works, and build on a reputation established over 30 years of outstanding science and discovery.”

The Neutrinos at the Main Injector (NuMI) project, with the MINOS experiment, includes over 200 scientists, engineers, technical specialists and students from 32 institutions in 6 countries, including Brazil, France, Greece, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States. The institutions include universities and national laboratories. The U.S. Department of Energy provides the major share of the funding, with additional funding from the U.S. National Science Foundation and from the United Kingdom’s Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council.

“Fermilab’s MINOS experiment is the newest and most powerful tool in investigating the properties of the neutrino,” said Secretary of Energy Samuel W. Bodman. “This research may lead to new insights into the early history and evolution of the universe. We eagerly look forward to the new knowledge generated by the MINOS experiment.”

The MINOS experiment will use a neutrino beam produced at Fermilab’s Main Injector accelerator to probe the secrets of these elusive subatomic particles: where do they come from, what are their masses and how do they change from one kind to another? In Minnesota, a 6,000-ton particle detector will search for neutrinos that may have changed from one kind to another during the 2.5-millisecond trip. Trillions of lab-created neutrinos will pass through the MINOS detector each year. But because neutrinos interact so rarely, only about 1,500 of them each year will collide with atoms inside the detector. The rest pass right through with no effect. MINOS scientists will use the change from one type of neutrino to another as the key to discovering neutrinos’ secrets.

“In time, the MINOS project will be viewed as a landmark event in the history of physics. This world-class research is a bold, visionary initiative which will have profound implications for our understanding of the structure and evolution of the universe,” said Congressman James L. Oberstar, whose Minnesota district includes the Soudan site. “The billion-year-old rock formations in the Soudan Underground mine, which is located in my congressional district, have provided some of the world’s richest iron ore. Now the mine may help unlock mysteries about the origins of the universe. I congratulate Dr. Earl Peterson, Director of the Soudan Underground Laboratory; the University of Minnesota; Fermilab, and the U.S. Department of Energy for being at the forefront of scientific research and discovery.”

Generating the neutrinos destined for Minnesota required building a beamline housed underground at Fermilab. The beamline is a 4,000-foot tunnel, whose direction, roughly north and slightly down, points from Fermilab to Soudan. The beamline tunnel holds the components which generate the neutrinos from protons accelerated by Fermilab’s Main Injector. Then comes the MINOS Hall, a 120-foot-long cavern located 350 feet below the surface of the lab campus, with access by an elevator traveling the equivalent of a 30-story building. The MINOS Hall holds the near detector, a smaller version of the MINOS detector at Soudan, which is used to measure the properties of the neutrinos at the start of their trip to northern Minnesota.

“Physicists from around the world are trying to understand what these mysterious neutrinos are telling us,” said Fermilab director Michael Witherell. “Today, we are embarking on a journey of exploration using the most powerful neutrino facility in the world. I am extremely proud of what the people of Fermilab have accomplished in completing the NuMI project. I would like to thank the American people and the federal government for making the necessary commitment to support great science.”

Prof. Ian Halliday, CEO of the UK’s Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council, anticipates the revelations from the experiment’s precision measurements.

“The mysteries of the elusive neutrino are about to be unveiled,” Halliday said. “For the very first time we will be able to investigate the changing state of this bizarre particle to an unprecedented accuracy of a few percent in a controlled beam of neutrinos created in the laboratory. I’m extremely proud that UK scientists have played a key role in bringing this experiment to fruition and, in collaboration with their international colleagues, will be amongst the first in the world to study its unique characteristics.”

The MINOS far detector is located in the Soudan Underground Mine State Park, operated by the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources. As the first iron mine in Minnesota, the Soudan mine is a registered national historic site. Market forces brought operations to a close in 1962. Before expansion to allow for the MINOS detector and the Fermilab Cryogenic Dark Matter Search experiment, the Soudan underground laboratory was home to the Soudan 2 detector experiment, searching for decays of protons, the charged components of the atomic nucleus. Park staff now provide public tours underground for 30,000 to 40,000 visitors annually, viewing both the mine area and MINOS detector hall in the underground laboratory. An added attraction is a 60-foot mural, painted on the wall of the cavern by Minneapolis artist Joe Giannetti.

Michael Turner, the National Science Foundation’s Assistant Director for Mathematics and the Physical Sciences, believes the neutrinos’ infinitesimal mass belies their significant and ubiquitous impact.

“Neutrinos are always referred to as ghostly particles, as if they are of little interest and have to be apologized for,” Turner said. “Nothing could be further from the truth. Neutrinos account for as much of the mass of the universe as do stars, they play a crucial role in the production of the chemical elements in the explosions of stars, and they may well explain the origin of the neutrons, protons and electrons that are the building blocks of all the atoms in the universe. MINOS will help us better understand how neutrinos shaped the universe we live in.”

Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, founded in 1967, is a Department of Energy National Laboratory in Batavia, Illinois, about 40 miles west of Chicago. Fermilab operates the world’s highest-energy particle accelerator, the Tevatron, on its 6,800-acre campus. About 2,500 physicists from universities and laboratories around the world do physics experiments using Fermilab’s accelerators to discover what the universe is made of and how it works. Discoveries at Fermilab have resulted in remarkable new insights into the nature of the world around us. Fermilab is operated by Universities Research Association, Inc. a consortium of 90 research universities, for the United States Department of Energy, which owns the laboratory.

For more information, please visit:

NuMI/MINOS project
http://www-numi.fnal.gov/

NuMI/MINOS Facts for Neighbors
http://www.fnal.gov/neutrinos

List of institutions collaborating on MINOS:
http://www-numi.fnal.gov/collab/institut.html

Brazil: University of Campinas University of Sao PauloFrance: College de FranceGreece : University of Athens Russia: ITEP-Moscow Lebedev Physical Institute IHEP-Protvino United Kingdom: University of Cambridge University College London, London University of Oxford Rutherford Appleton Laboratory University of Sussex

United States: Argonne National Laboratory Benedictine University Brookhaven National Laboratory California Institute of Technology Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory Harvard University Illinois Institute of Technology Indiana University Livermore National Laboratory Macalester College, Minnesota University of Minnesota, Minneapolis University of Minnesota, Duluth University of Pittsburgh Soudan Underground Laboratory University of South Carolina Stanford University Texas A&M University University of Texas at Austin Tufts University Western Washington University College Of William & Mary University of Wisconsin-Madison

Press release by MINOS collaborators in the UK