Butterfly researchers come to Fermilab for rare species

Butterfly researchers Paulette Haywood and Sara Bright look for a Gray Comma butterfly with TD's Tom Peterson, Fermilab's resident butterfly expert.

Scientists usually come to Fermilab in search of particles, but two researchers recently came from Alabama in search of something else - a rare species of butterfly called the Gray Comma.

The Gray Comma is a woodland butterfly, found at Fermilab in the "Big Woods" (ELM-24) on the western part of the site.

Butterfly researchers Paulette Haywood and Sara Bright have spent 12 years working on a book about the 125 butterfly species of the Southeastern U.S., and the Gray Comma was one of the last 10 species they needed to document. The Gray Comma has been seen at Fermilab by Technical Division engineer and butterfly expert Tom Peterson for several years. After finding Peterson's butterfly website and learning more about the laboratory's natural environment, Haywood and Bright thought Fermilab would be the ideal place to search. "The Gray Comma would have been difficult to find and document in the Southeast," said Haywood. "So for us to be able to come to Fermilab and knock another species off our list was huge."

When Bright and Haywood arrived at Fermilab, Peterson was able to guide them directly to the area where Gray Commas are usually seen. "It would be great if more places would take on the type of attitude and responsibility toward the environment that Fermilab does," Bright said.

Peterson, who has watched butterflies at Fermilab for 31 years, was happy to share the lab's prairie with other butterfly enthusiasts. "We've been careful in our management of the land here at Fermilab to restore it in a way that's friendly to nature," Peterson said. "And certainly that's reflected in the variety of butterflies, birds and plants we find here."

Haywood and Bright hope their book will help people understand how interconnected nature is and the importance of taking care of the environment. "People love to look at beautiful butterflies," Haywood said. "But they have to understand that to see those beautiful butterflies, there have to be places like Fermilab for them to live and thrive."

Peterson will hold a butterfly walk at Fermilab on Tuesday, August 14, 4:30 p.m. at the Interpretive Trail off of the Pine Street exit road. Anyone is welcome.

-- Amelia Williamson

Watch your speed - literally

Fermilab Security has implemented a radar speed sign to deter speeding. The sign appeared on the curve of Kautz Road on Friday afternoon; Security will move it around the site to remind drivers to obey the speed limit.

msnbc.com,
August 10, 2007

Gravity stumps scientists

The wimpiest force in the universe is tough to explain

In the deepest depths of space, gravity tugs on matter to form galaxies, stars, black holes and the like. In spite of its infinite reach, however, gravity is the wimpiest of all forces in the universe.

This weakness also makes it the most mysterious, as scientists can't measure it in the laboratory as easily as they can detect its effects on planets and stars. The repulsion between two positively charged protons, for example, is 1036 times stronger than gravity's pull between them - that's 1 followed by 36 zeros less macho.

Physicists want to squeeze little old gravity into the standard model - the crown-jewel theory of modern physics that explains three other fundamental forces in physics - but none has succeeded. Like a runt at a pool party, gravity just doesn't fit in when using Einstein's theory of relativity, which explains gravity only on large scales.

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