Seeing through walls and breaking down barriers

A cartoon-style illustration of a gray outdoor staircase with ornate serpents, tongues out, as the bannisters. Green grass in front, red and purple lightning shapes striking down all over the illustration.

Seeing through walls and breaking down barriers

Symmetry feature

Physicists and archaeologists are teaming up to provide research opportunities for Black and Hispanic undergraduates to image an archaeological site in Mexico using muon tomography. Fermilab personnel will help with the project, and Fermilab will also produce the scintillators for use in the muon detector.

The conveyor belt taking the rocks from the crusher to the Open Cut passes close to the town of Lead, South Dakota. Image: Fermilab

Rock transportation system is ready for excavation of DUNE caverns

Fermilab feature

Fermilab contractors have successfully commissioned a system that will move 800,000 tons of rock to create space for the international Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment’s detectors in South Dakota. Excavation crews will transport the rock from a mile underground to the surface using refurbished mining infrastructure and the newly constructed conveyor system.

Dark matter’s signature could be written in stone

A proposed dark-matter detection method would look for tracks of dark matter etched into billion-year-old mineral samples.

UK starts production on core components for DUNE project

From Lab Mate, March 13, 2021: Learn more about the detectors being developed for the DUNE project at STFC’s Daresbury Laboratory, the biggest non-US contributor to this global experiment.

Ereditato joins Yale Physics as Visiting Professor

From Yale University, March 4, 2021: Fermilab scientist Antonio Ereditato has joined Yale University as a visiting professor in physics for a 3-year joint appointment between Yale and Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. He has accomplished several research and development (R&D) studies and his research at Yale will focus on experimental neutrino physics.

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

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

Fermilab feature

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.

Dark matter found? Second experiment weighs in

From Forbes, Feb. 12, 2021: In June 2020, results from an experiment located in Italy suggested that dark matter may have been directly observed. Another experiment, conducted in China, has announced consistent data. Has dark matter been discovered? Fermilab scientist Don Lincoln explains why we’ll only know in retrospect using the next generation of detectors.

UK scientists build core components of global neutrino experiment

Fermilab feature

Engineers and technicians in the UK have started production of key piece of equipment for a major international science experiment. The UK government has invested $89 million in the international Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment. As part of the investment, the UK is delivering a series of vital detector components built at the Science and Technology Facilities Council’s Daresbury Laboratory.

Fleming collaborates in the composition of MicroBooNE music

From Yale University, Jan. 22, 2021: For his new piece of music, “MicroBooNE,” David Ibbett, Fermilab’s first composer-in-residence, collaborated with physics professor Bonnie Fleming through a series of discussions about the science behind the experiment that inspired the composition. The neutrino-inspired piece premiered on Dec. 8, 2020, as part of the Fermilab Arts and Lectures Series.

Compelling evidence of neutrino process opens physics possibilities

From Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Jan. 26, 2021: The COHERENT particle physics experiment at Oak Ridge National Laboratory has firmly established the existence of a new kind of neutrino interaction. To observe this interaction, scientists used CENNS-10, a liquid argon detector built at and on loan from Fermilab.