 | Tuesday, November 9, 2004 |
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Tuesday, November 9 3:30 p.m. DIRECTOR'S COFFEE BREAK - 2nd Flr X-Over 4:00 p.m. Accelerator Physics and Technology Seminar - 1 West Speaker: F. Le Pimpec, Stanford Linear Accelerator Center Title: Beam-Surface Interactions: A Vacuum Point of View
Wednesday, November 10 |
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Tuesday, November 9 Tomato Bisque Pesto Marinated Chicken Breast $4.75 Burgundy Beef Tips $4.25 Baked Fish Creole over Rice $3.75 Grilled Chicken Caesar Wrap $4.75 Pepperoni Lover's Calzones $3.25 Rio Grande Taco Salads $4.75 |
 Mostly Sunny 54º/42º
Extended Forecast |
Secon Level 3 |
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Fine-tune This | ||
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Quick, what's 987654321 divided by 123456789?
The answer, 8.0000000729…, is not a whole number, but very close, by less than a tenth of a million. At the Wine and Cheese seminar on Oct. 15, Greg Landsberg of Brown University promised a bottle of wine to anyone who could solve a riddle about this calculation by the end of the talk. The challenge, mind you, was not to find the result -- Landsberg gave that away -- but to explain why it was so weird. Landsberg said he was trying to make a point about physics. There are numbers in nature that just happen to be "fine tuned" by freak accident: For instance, from earth, the sun and the moon look roughly as big as each other. But other balancing acts that look miraculous can instead be explained by deeper-running principles. Landsberg's formula, it turns out, is part of a general fact about the way we represent numbers in a particular base, n. (Dividing the two numbers with digits running from n-1 to 1 and reverse, the answer approaches n-2. For the decimal representation used in Landsberg's example, n equals 10.) Similarly, Landsberg said, some of the constants of physics that seem anomalous could one day find their explanation in the big picture. One example is the so-called hierarchy problem: Three of the four fundamental forces of nature have comparable strengths, when contrasted to the fourth, the much weaker force of gravity.
In the event, Fermilab director Mike Witherell solved Landsberg's mathematical
quiz in time to claim the prize: A bottle of Sakonnet red from Landsberg's (and Brown's)
state of Rhode Island.
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Aurora Borealis Lights Up Fermilab's Sky | ||
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From The Daily Herald, November 7, 2004 Scouts, meet Fermilab By David Sharos No, the engineers aren't getting younger these days, but Fermilab employees do hope to spark and nurture interest in engineering for Girl Scouts with a new Fermilab badge.
About 200 Girl Scouts from area councils came to the nationally recognized Fermilab in Batavia Saturday to meet with scientists and engineers, and to explore the prairie trails and view a video on Fermilab's Prairie Restoration Project.
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Good Morning! | ||
The President's budget request, submitted to Congress in early February, asked for $747 million for High Energy Physics at the DOE, an increase of 0.8% from FY 2004. The Fermilab budget is $292 million in the FY 2005 request, up 2.2% from FY 2004. The document included language that the DOE "will begin engineering design of a new Major Item of Equipment, the BTeV experiment at Fermilab." This is the only new project included in the HEP budget. In late June the House passed its version of the Energy and Water Appropriations bill, which recommended an additional $16 million for HEP. The Senate did not pass an Energy and Water bill in its regular session, so we have been operating according to a continuing resolution. This is not so unusual. The DOE budget for FY 2004 was signed in December, 2003, and the FY 2003 budget was not signed until February, 2003.
The Senate will reconvene for one week starting November 16. They could pass an Energy and Water Appropriations bill at that time, but if that does not happen they will pass another continuing resolution.
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Yesterday's issue of Fermilab Today stated that the eight people
who received certificates of appreciation from Director Mike Witherell were
nominated by the Education Office. Nominations were actually
made by Fermilab employees and users. Sten Hansen, who received the Director's
Award for Contributions to Pre-College Education was actually nominated by a user from
the University of Rochester. Fermilab Today regrets the error.
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October 29 - November4 Tevatron: Shimming 412 Dipoles - 100% complete Linac: Up and Running Booster: Up and Running Antiproton Source: Technicians expect to begin closing up the Prevault and Pretarget areas the week beginning 11/8/04. MI/Recycler: MI-30 & 62 correction magnet replacement is approximately 95% complete. MiniBooNE: They are waiting on parts, but they expect to be ready by November 30th. NuMI: They have successfully tested their horn. Read the Current Accelerator Update |
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Clarification In Fermilab Today for Friday, Nov. 5, the story "Why was my computer blocked from the network?" included a photo of Wyatt Merritt, Michael Diesburg and Amber Boehnlein with computers at FCC, to represent generally the scope of computing at Fermilab. The three people pictured are not responsible for computing security, they do not block other computer users from the network, and Fermilab Today regrets any misinterpretation caused by the photo.
Holiday Book Fair
Fermilab Barnstormers Meeting Wednesday
Power Outage News |
