astrophysics Archives

Homebound astrophysicists miss mountaintops

Photo of a dome-shaped building, likely an observatory, atop a mountain, which gold mist surrounds. Blue sky and silhouette of birds above.

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, travel bans and stay-at-home orders meant astrophysicists collaborating on the Dark Energy Survey needed to find a new way to conduct their observations using the Dark Energy Camera.

Amazing ways to look for dark matter

A man with short gray hair and glasses smiles. He is wearing a black blazer and a black T-shirt that reads "Physics is everything." He is in front of a starry sky. To his right, text that says "Can we find dark matter?" In the lower right-hand corner, an illustration of an atom.

Dark matter remains one of the unsolved mysteries of modern physics. In this video, Fermilab’s Don Lincoln explains two innovative methods whereby Fermilab scientists look for types of dark matter the broader community largely overlooks.

Take the Snowmass early career survey

An illustration of a blue magnifying glass with a pie chart of science-themed photo snippets and illustration snippets in its lens. At the center of that pie, reads "Snowmass Survey Initiative 2021." Below the magnifying glass is a yellow graph line and various blue bars as in a bar graph.

The Snowmass early career survey is an initiative to seek input from junior and senior current and former users and collaborators of US-funded experiments and facilities of the High-Energy Physics and Astrophysics community.

A minute with Aleksandra Ćiprijanović, astrophysicist

Whether in Serbia or Chicago, Fermilab postdoctoral researcher Aleksandra Ćiprijanović is working to unlock the secrets of the night sky. As a member of the Deep Skies Lab, an international collaboration of physicists, she’s figuring out how to use artificial intelligence and machine learning to better handle the huge amounts of data needed for discovery science.

Graphic talk about the universe – Public lecture by Dr. Clifford Johnson

Thumbnail of an image from Dr. Johnson's lecture: A cartoon drawing of a young woman with blonde hair holding a box that says "The Theory of Everything," and another image of the box slightly shifted, still in her hand, saying the Theory of Everything ... So far. On the righthand side of the screen, a still of Dr. Clifford Johnson speaking

In this graphic but family-friendly 40-minute talk, Clifford Johnson, a professor at the University of Southern California, discusses the process of turning complex scientific topics into compelling visual narratives.

Modeling collisions between argon nuclei and neutrinos from a supernova

A simulated supernova neutrino interaction in the MicroBooNE detector, produced using MARLEY. This work lays a strong foundation for future supernova neutrino measurements with DUNE. Credit: MicroBooNE collaboration

A new computer program called MARLEY simulates supernova neutrino interactions in argon-based particle detectors.

Hydrogen was nearly impossible

As the expanding universe cooled after the Big Bang, protons and electrons found each other and made hydrogen atoms, with a little helium and lithium. Illustration: CERN

The existence of hydrogen in our universe was touch-and-go. During the Big Bang, it depended on a minuscule mass difference between two subatomic particles called quarks.

Even Bananas 05: Neutrin… WHOA A SUPERNOVA!

Let’s talk about some of the largest explosions in the universe: supernovae. Join Fermilab scientists Dr. Kirsty Duffy and Dr. Anne Schukraft to find out more about exploding stars, tiny particles and the SuperNova Early Warning System (SNEWS).

Particle detector at Fermilab plays crucial role in Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment

One of the DUNE near detector's subdetectors, SAND, will detect neutrinos with an electronic calorimeter, which measures particle energy, and a tracker, which records particle momenta and charge. A second subdetector will use liquid argon to mimic the neutrino interactions in the far detector. The third will use gaseous argon. Working together, they will measure particles with more precision than other neutrino detectors have been able to achieve. Credit: DUNE collaboration

DUNE’s near detector, located at Fermilab, will take vital measurements of neutrino beam energy and composition before it reaches the experiment’s far detector in South Dakota. Its unmatched precision measurements will offer its own opportunities for the discovery of new physics.

Camera lenses with metamaterials-based coating help study ancient light in the universe

From AZoMaterials, Feb. 18, 2021: Fermilab scientist Jeff McMahon and his research team have designed a new kind of metamaterials-based antireflection coating for the silicon lenses used in cameras used to capture the cosmic microwave background.