April Fool

ICARUS passive-aggressively voices his angst. Photo: Artemis

Fermilab researchers may find themselves temporarily waylaid when trying to access the ICARUS experiment. ICARUS’s father, Daedalus, showed up earlier this week and his tweenage son has not responded well.

This year April Fools’ Day took place on a Sunday, a day when most employees and users are not at the lab. If you missed seeing the Fools’ Day posts, not to worry. The posts are tagged ‘April Fool‘. Enjoy!

From CERN, April 1: The LHCb experiment at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider has announced the discovery of Eggeron ηgg (eta-gg), familiarly known as the “Humpty Dumpty” particle, the smallest lump of nuclear glue.

To celebrate Easter this year, Director Nigel Lockyer will head out to the bison pasture to host an egg roll. The bison are not invited. The egg roll will take place at 9 a.m. on Easter Sunday. All are welcome. It’s a great photo op, so bring your phones and cameras.

Effective immediately, Fermilab is launching a new internal communications initiative. 🙂 All division heads will now communicate with each other, and their division’s employees, using only emojis. 😀 Fermilab leadership recognizes the fact that tone is often lost in straight prose. The initiative should significantly reduce miscommunication and lead to a happier, clearer and more motivating work environment. 😉

This week, some project managers met to rename the Proton Improvement Plan II, known as PIP-II, which will increase proton beam power at Fermilab. They believed that the lab would be better served by more colloquial, less stodgy language. Effective April 1, the project is named PEEP-II, which stands for Protons, Effortless and Energetic, Please, I I (pronounced “aye, aye”). Please adjust your documentation accordingly.

Salty serendipity

Innovation often appears when you aren't expecting it. In a recent test of Fermilab's new A2D2 accelerator, an IARC group boiled a cup of water using the machine, and they discovered something scientifically and olfactorily delicious. Photo: Reidar Hahn and Dynamo Brando

The A2D2 accelerator has a new, instantly gratifying application.

So close, yet so far away. That’s how University of Chicago scientists often describe the relationship between the south Chicago university campus and the west Chicagoland Fermilab grounds.