A mile underground in South Dakota, construction crews have worked diligently to carve out an extensive network of caverns and tunnels that one day will house a huge neutrino experiment. Their efforts have paid off: With almost 400,000 tons of rock extracted from the earth, the excavation has reached the halfway point.
From the Rapid City Journal, Jan. 12, 2023: An interview with Fermilab project manager Joshua Willhite on the excavation of the caverns for the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE) being built under the Black Hills of South Dakota at SURF. Willhite is a mechanical engineering graduate of the South Dakota Mines university who spoke with him about his love of engineering and how the program at SD Mines led to his work on DUNE. This article is an adaptation of the South Dakota Mines story that published on Jan. 10.
Scientists and engineers from around the world collaborate with Fermilab to develop state-of-the-art technologies and solve the mysteries of matter, energy, space and time. Here is a look at 10 ways they advanced science and technology this year.
Laza Rakotondravohitra was the first Malagasy grad student to conduct research in neutrino physics. He and others are working to ensure he will be far from the last.
From Physics Today: Snowmass 2022 this past July took place over 10 days with almost 1,200 people participating online and in person at the University of Washington. It involved 511 white papers spanning 10 “frontier” areas. This once-a-decade meeting also reaffirmed support for completing the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE) and the affiliated Long-Baseline Neutrino Facility to carry our DUNE’s science goals.
Excavation of the large caverns for the Long-Baseline Neutrino Facility is in full swing. Over a third of the whopping 800,000 tons that need to be extracted from a mile underground have been removed. When finished, the underground facility will cover an area about the size of eight soccer fields and provide space for the international Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment.
From Phys.org, August 3, 2022: Fermilab’s NOvA experiment reports analysis on oscillation data delivering some of the most accurate estimates to date describing neutrino oscillations and providing important hints on two important aspects of neutrino physics—the ordering of neutrino masses and the degree of charge-parity (CP) violation. These results set the stage for the next generation of “long-baseline” experiments, like Hyper-K and DUNE, which will dramatically boost our ability to probe elusive aspects of neutrino physics.
From Physics Today, July 2022: Anne Heavey, senior technical editor at Fermilab describes how teams from around the world are developing and constructing detector components for the world’s largest cryogenic particle detector, the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE).
Lia Merminga, an internationally renowned physicist and scientific leader, has been appointed to lead the U.S.’ premier particle physics and accelerator lab, effective April 18. Merminga will be the seventh director of Fermilab and the first woman to serve in the role.
The career of Elaine McCluskey, who most recently served as project manager constructing the future facility for the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment, has had a lasting impact.