Divisions come together to help with shutdown

Bob Mau

Beginning August 6, Fermilab's divisions and departments will come together for 10 weeks to make accelerator improvements during this year's shutdown. The main projects planned are replacement of the pi-shaped power poles and installation of collimators and new corrector magnets in the Main Injector and Booster accelerators.

"When the beam goes off, it provides the only opportunity for everyone to get into the accelerator enclosures to do necessary maintenance and to make improvements." said Roger Dixon, head of the Accelerator Division.

Fermilab's wooden pi poles, designed by founder Robert Wilson and built more than 30 years ago, are in desperate need of renovation. The pi poles are rotting and have been plagued by woodpeckers and insects for years. It will take about eight weeks for workers to replace the old poles with identically painted steel ones.

In order to control beam losses in the Main Injector, workers will install a new collimator that will shield the rest of the accelerator from the lost beam. The new steel and marble collimators will take 9 to 10 weeks to install and will help keep residual radiation levels in the tunnel low. The new correction magnets going into the Booster will make it possible to correct the Booster orbit through the entire cycle. Half the magnets will be installed now, and the other half will be installed during another shutdown in summer 2008.

"An enormous amount of maintenance work will also go on during the shutdown," said Accelerator Operations Chief Bob Mau. "When the accelerator is down, we repair things like vacuum systems and water systems and do hose changes. We're trying to get the machine to a point where it's completely reliable for the next year of operation."

The main impact on most Fermilab staff will be the site-wide power outage August 6 from 7:00 to 7:30 a.m. when the shutdown begins. There will also be localized power outages throughout the 10-week period. A schedule of planned power outages during the shutdown can be found here.

-- Amelia Williamson

ES&H annual picnic brings section together

ES&H employees eat and relax during the division's annual picnic on Wednesday

A beanbag toss and home-cooked food were some of the highlights Wednesday afternoon at the ES&H Section's annual picnic outside the Kuhn Barn. The event was a chance for employees and summer students who are scattered around Fermilab to get together and celebrate their section's success. This year's annual picnic featured plenty of delicious burgers, chicken, cookies and cakes, cooked by ES&H volunteers.

"We've done it for almost 20 years," said organizer Nancy Sells. "It promotes camaraderie among the group and gives everyone a chance to get together to eat and chat. We have employees in the High Rise as well as on various sites, so it's nice to get them all together for a celebration."

-- Lauren Younis

From Nature
July 19, 2007:

Unseen Universe: Welcome to the dark side

Physicists say that 96% of the Universe is unseen, and appeal to the ideas of 'dark matter' and 'dark energy' to make up the difference. In the first of two articles, Jenny Hogan reports that attempts to identify the mysterious dark matter are on the verge of success. In the second, Geoff Brumfiel asks why dark energy, hailed as a breakthrough when discovered a decade ago, is proving more frustrating than ever to the scientists who study it.

We're underneath 1,400 metres of Italian mountain, walking through cavernous halls that lead from a 10-kilometre-long road tunnel. The scientists working within the Gran Sasso National Laboratory near L'Aquila seem ant-like in scale against the backdrop of vast metal spheres, towers and scaffolding that house their underground experiments. Physicist Elena Aprile is hurrying the group along, pointing out one project after another. She stops to take a photo of one, exclaiming at its size. We finally reach Aprile's XENON10 experiment, which is tucked away at the end of a small side tunnel. This is the project into which Aprile has poured her energy over the past few years, one of several experiments at Gran Sasso and around the world that are waiting for a passing piece of 'dark matter' to show itself.

Once upon a time, waiting for new particles to reveal themselves was a major endeavour. Scientists in the 1940s would also head to the mountains - to their tops, not to underground caverns - carrying emulsion-covered plates to capture strange new cosmic rays. But as particle accelerators became more powerful, physicists became adept at making their own novelties, and lying in wait for chance discoveries fell out of fashion. In this, dark-matter searches are something of a throwback.

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