Tuesday, Jan. 22, 2013
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Have a safe day!

Tuesday, Jan. 22

3:30 p.m.
DIRECTOR'S COFFEE BREAK - 2nd Flr X-Over

THERE WILL BE NO ACCELERATOR PHYSICS AND TECHNOLOGY SEMINAR TODAY

Wednesday, Jan. 23

3:30 p.m.
DIRECTOR'S COFFEE BREAK - 2nd Flr X-Over

4 p.m.
Fermilab Colloquium - One West
Speaker: Catherine Pfister, University of Chicago
Title: Climate Change in the Sea: The Implications of Increasing the Carbon Dioxide Inputs to the Surface Ocean

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Flags at full staff

Wilson Hall Cafe

Tuesday, Jan. 22

- Breakfast: All-American breakfast
- Old El Paso lime chicken
- Ye olde fish and chips
- Chicken pot pie
- Smart cuisine: honey dijon pork chops
- Gourmet chicken salad croissant
- Assorted pizza
- Kiwi pecan chicken salad

Wilson Hall Cafe Menu

Chez Leon

Wednesday, Jan. 23
Lunch
- Stuffed cabbages
- Mashed potatoes
- German chocolate cake

Friday, Jan. 25
Dinner
- Roasted-red pepper soup
- Halibut with champagne butter sauce
- Lemongrass rice
- Sautéed sugar snap peas
- Pineapple coconut cake

Chez Leon Menu
Call x3524 to make your reservation.

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Feature

DOE launches Environmental Assessment for LBNE

The LBNE neutrino beamline at Fermilab would be located on the western part of the Fermialb site, near Giese and Kirk Roads. The locations of the three planned service buildings are marked with blue squares, and the footprint of the planned 52-foot-high hill is marked in green. Planned access roads are marked in yellow.

The planned Long-Baseline Neutrino Experiment is one of Fermilab's most prominent projects. Last week, the U.S. Department of Energy began the Environmental Assessment process for this project, which will determine if its construction and operation would have a significant impact on the environment.

LBNE is a collaboration of more than 350 scientists in five countries. It has been conceived as a world-leading neutrino experiment, one that involves sending trillions of the tiny particles through 800 miles of earth from Fermilab in Batavia to a detector at the Sanford Lab in South Dakota.

The first phase of the project would involve building a beam pipe underground on the Fermilab site and constructing a large hill a little more than 1,000 feet from Kirk Road to accommodate it. A 50-foot-high neutrino detector would be built just below the surface in Lead, S.D., at Sanford Lab. Because neutrinos rarely interact with other particles, no tunnel would be needed to send them through the earth.

Last month, the project received CD-1 approval for the conceptual design from DOE. Scientists and engineers can now proceed with the engineering design. Before the next approval can be given, LBNE must undergo an environmental review to determine just what impact building and operating the experiment might have on the environment.

The assessment is governed by the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). DOE will look at potential impacts to air, sound, water and soil, among other effects. If it is found that the project would have a significant impact, a more extensive review, called an Environmental Impact Statement, would have to be undertaken.

The entire process will take about 18 months, according to Peter Siebach, who is the DOE's NEPA compliance officer on the project. During that time, several public outreach events are planned.

The first will be a public information period, during which neighbors and other interested parties can attend informative meetings on the project, both in Illinois and in South Dakota. Fermilab's meeting is tentatively scheduled for late spring. The collaboration has unveiled a new LBNE Web page on the NEPA process, including a new fact sheet, providing detailed information on the process.

Read more

Andre Salles

From symmetry

Precocious protons

A brainy playground springs up at Fermilab, offering hands-on education experiences for kids. Image: Sandbox Studio

Ask a bunch of 10-year-olds this question: Would you rather hear about the journey of a proton through Fermilab's accelerators, or would you rather be a proton and take that journey yourself?

And now, go visit an ear doctor, since the deafening sound of kids shouting out the second option has no doubt caused some damage. It's no secret that hands-on education experiences are more fun for kids—it feels like recess, and yet learning is happening.

That's the guiding principle behind the Physics Playground, now under construction at Fermilab's Lederman Science Center. The first attraction to be built is a running track that allows children to pretend to be protons, antiprotons or muons, as they run along trails in the shape of the lab's iconic accelerator complex.

The track mirrors the route a particle takes as it travels through the linac, Fermilab's initial accelerator, then around the booster and the main injector, where the particle ramps up to nearly the speed of light. The path then leads to a replica of the Tevatron ring, where kids can pretend to be protons or antiprotons, running around the track in opposite directions depending on their choice.

The Proton Run is the brainchild of a veteran educator who knows the value of mixing fun with learning: Marge Bardeen, head of Fermilab's Office of Education.

Read more

Andre Salles

In the News

Galactic pile-up may point to mysterious new dark force in the universe

From Wired, Jan. 9, 2013

LONG BEACH, California—By closely mapping the mass of an enormous galactic collision, astronomers may have uncovered a type of force that only affects dark matter.

The results come from observations of the Musket Ball Cluster, a vast celestial object located about 5.23 billion light-years away in the constellation Cancer. Galaxies are usually gravitationally bound to other galaxies, creating massive galactic clusters. The Musket Ball Cluster is an example of what happens when two such galactic clusters—each composed of hundreds of individual galaxies—crash into one another.

Read more
Director's Corner

A great physics briefing book

Fermilab Director
Pier Oddone

This week the European Strategy Group meets in Erice, Italy, to formulate an updated European strategy for particle physics. The last European strategy document was summarized in two pages back in 2006 and established the physics goals of the European program and the R&D necessary for future machines. Since then much has changed.

The LHC has come into its own with outstanding performance and a huge discovery under its belt. It is clearly the machine that will dominate the Energy Frontier for the next two decades. The discovery of what we expect to be the Higgs boson is a triumph for particle physics and gives us a totally new particle to study: the first fundamental particle without spin. This discovery gives impetus to the International Linear Collider, and our Japanese colleagues are well on their way to propose that Japan host the ILC. There are many competing ideas for circular machines, including muon colliders, but none as advanced as the ILC.

The LHC has also produced an astounding number of results showing that various phenomena that lie beyond the Standard Model and that were postulated before the LHC turn-on have not yet been found. This is highly significant since the most comfortable theories prior to turning on the LHC would by now have us swimming in discoveries of new supersymmetric particles. Will the 14-TeV run in 2015, at twice the energy of the current run, bring them forward?

The window for future neutrino physics experiments is now wide open after the results from the Daya Bay experiment revealed the existence of a large mixing angle θ13. This large angle gives rise to many ideas for future experiments, including our Long-Baseline Neutrino Experiment. Results from present-day short-baseline neutrino experiments and reactor experiments do not sit comfortably with the standard three-generations-of-neutrinos framework, so a new crop of experiments will pursue these apparent anomalies. Rare-process experiments are also in demand as one way to investigate whether there are any particles to be found much beyond the reach of the LHC.

Dark energy and dark matter still remain mysterious. Dark energy is consistent so far with a cosmological constant, and there is no convincing evidence yet for dark matter particles. We continue to work harder and more imaginatively to solve these mysteries.

It is a very rich menu indeed that confronts the Strategy Group in Erice and should make for a very interesting week. The group retreating in Erice has the advantage of a comprehensive Physics Briefing Book, produced by the Preparatory Group through a very exhaustive process analogous to the Snowmass community workshops in the United States. It is a superb effort and great summary of the status and opportunities in our field.

Construction Update

Electrical and piping work for new cryoplant nearly complete

Workers have installed water and cryogenic piping and electrical infrastructure (switchboards and conduits) in the CMTF compressor building. Photo: Jerry Leibfritz, AD

Since the construction of the CMTF building was completed in December 2011, teams of union electricians and pipefitters have been busy at work installing the infrastructure required for the new cryogenic plant that will take up residence in the building. Preparations to begin commissioning the helium compressors are nearly complete, with initial start-up scheduled to begin next month. Work on the infrastructure needed for delivery of the cryogenic refrigerator is also winding down.

The electrical and piping infrastructure is an important element of almost any new project of this type, one that is often less publicized even though it can represent a substantial portion of the project effort and cost. Approximately 2,600 man-hours of electrician labor and 3,600 man-hours of pipefitter labor have gone into this effort to date.

Cryogenic piping in CMTF building is nearly complete. Photo: Jerry Leibfritz, AD
Announcements

Today's New Announcements

Free tickets - Bella Gaia: A Poetic Vision From Space - Jan. 25

Budgeting Basics for 2013 - Jan. 30, Feb. 2

Series on the Bible book of Daniel - begins today

NALWO Armenian cooking demonstration - Jan. 24

Artist reception - Jan. 25

Fermilab Arts Series - Tomas Kubinek - Jan. 26

January 2013 float holiday for timecard use

UChicago panel discussion on Higgs discovery - Feb. 7

URA Visiting Scholars Program deadline - Feb. 25

2013 FRA scholarship applications accepted until April 1

Professional development courses

Abri Credit Union - member appreciation

Scottish country dancing Tuesday evenings in Kuhn Barn

International Folk Dancing Thursday evenings in Kuhn Barn

Indoor soccer

Employee discounts