Fermilab Today

[On April 9], engineers at CERN broke a world record when they accelerated a beam of particles to 6.5 trillion electronvolts — 60 percent higher than the previous world record of 4 TeV.

On April 5 engineers sent beams of protons all the way around the improved Large Hadron Collider for the first time in more than two years (pictured above). On April 9, they ramped up the power of the LHC and maintained the 6.5 TeV beam for more than 30 minutes before dumping the high-energy protons into a thick graphite block.

"This is an important milestone, but it is really just a stepping stone to generating 13 TeV collisions, which is our real goal," says Giulia Papotti, a lead engineer at the LHC. "If you want to find something new in particle physics, you have to search where no one's searched before. That's the point of going to higher energy."

—Sarah Charley

In Brief

Calling all photographers: Join the Fermilab Photo Club

Are you still trying to figure out the fancy new camera you got back in December? Then join the Fermilab Photography Club!

The Fermilab Photography Club meets every other Tuesday from noon to 12:30 p.m. in the Snake Pit (WH2NE). The next meeting is April 28.

Club activities include photo walks, tours of laboratory facilities (see Photos of the Day below), demonstrations, guest speakers and the occasional friendly photo contest.

Photographers of all skill levels are encouraged to join. Membership is free and open to all employees, contractors and their immediate family members.

If you're interested in joining, please email Marty Murphy, or simply show up to a meeting and introduce yourself.

Photos of the Day

Perspectives on the Cockcroft-Walton pre-accelerator

The photos featured here were taken during a tour by Fermilab Photography Club members of the Cockcroft-Walton negative hydrogen ion source. Photo: Steve Krave, TD

It may be decommissioned, but the Cockcroft-Walton pre-accelerator is as fetching as ever. Photo: Mark Kaletka, CCD

You don't often typically see this view of the Cockcroft-Waltons. Photo: Marty Murphy, AD

From the Office of Partnerships and Technology Transfer

Tell us about your GISMO!

Cherri Schmidt

Cherri Schmidt, head of OPTT, wrote this column.

In my last column, I encouraged Fermilab's inventors to share their great ideas with the Office of Partnerships and Technology Transfer (OPTT) early and often. While I can't say my call to action resulted in deafening silence, it was clear from the few whispers of response that we need to do much more to help you identify and possibly protect Fermilab's intellectual property.

One of the most interesting messages was that people didn't even know if they had invented something that needed to be disclosed. We also learned that the existing Record of Invention (ROI) form has been an obstacle, using "patent speak" instead of plain English. As a result, we are leaving too many great ideas on the shelf. That is why we are launching GISMO. GISMO stands for Great Ideas Submitted More Often. GISMO is designed to start a conversation between you and the OPTT team early in the creation process so that we can help you identify what ideas should be disclosed and help guide you through the process for those ideas that should be protected.

How does GISMO work?

1. It starts with a GISMO form, which asks you to describe your idea for a new technology in plain English. Just fill out the form and forward it to optt@fnal.gov.

2. We will then schedule a discussion with you to talk about your idea and determine if we can protect it through a patent or copyright.

3. If we decide that the idea can be protected, we will help you complete the more formal ROI so that we can disclose it to the Department of Energy.

4. You also may be invited to present your idea to the Invention Disclosure Committee, an interdisciplinary group of scientists and engineers that advises OPTT on patent and copyright decisions. In this event, OPTT staff will help you prepare a "pitch deck" to present your idea most effectively.

5. Finally, if your idea is selected for patent or copyright protection, OPTT will assist you throughout the patent application or copyright protection process.

Why do we want more disclosures? More disclosures should yield more high-quality patents and copyrights. More patents and copyrights give us a better platform for partnering with industry to transition technology created for science into commercial application. These spin-off applications, in turn, help us broaden the base of support for the laboratory.

Today, we are announcing a spring GISMO campaign that will run from now through May 31. I am challenging each of you to identify those ideas that might be patentable or copyrightable. As an added incentive, the division, center, section or office that generates the most GISMOs per capita during this campaign will receive $500 of additional employee morale funds that can help pay for a summer picnic or other event.

Tell us about your GISMO by visiting the OPTT website.

Safety Update

ESH&Q weekly report, April 14

This week's safety report, compiled by the Fermilab ESH&Q Section, contains no incidents.

See the full report.

In the News

'Cosmic shear' reveals dark matter in new high-resolution map

From Physics World, April 13, 2015

The largest high-resolution and contiguous map of dark matter in the universe has been unveiled by the Dark Energy Survey. The researchers who created the map say that it demonstrates the potential for a technique based on weak gravitational lensing to be used for studying dark matter and dark energy. Called "cosmic shear," the technique is now being used to regenerate a full-sized 3D map, which should be completed in 2020.

Dark matter is an invisible entity that appears to interact only through gravity. Physicists believe it accounts for four-fifths of the matter in the universe and, while they have some ideas as to what it could be made of, it has never been detected directly.