To our NIU partners, friends:

We are shocked and deeply saddened by the shooting that occurred Thursday afternoon on the Northern Illinois University campus. Our thoughts are with the families, students, teachers and staff affected by this terrible tragedy. NIU is a long-standing laboratory partner. To our NIU colleagues, friends and neighbors, we extend our deepest condolences and offer our support.

COUPP experiment tightens limits on dark matter

Physicist Mike Crisler inspects the bubble chamber of the Chicagoland Observatory for Underground Particle Physics experiment.

Physicists revive bubble chamber technology to search for WIMPs

Scientists working on the COUPP experiment at the Department of Energy's Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory today (February 14) announced a new development in the quest to observe dark matter. The Chicagoland Observatory for Underground Particle Physics experiment tightened constraints on the "spin-dependent" properties of WIMPS, weakly interacting massive particles that are candidates for dark matter. Their results, combined with the findings of other dark matter searches, contradict the claims for the observation of such particles by the Dark Matter experiment (DAMA) in Italy and further restrict the hunting ground for physicists to track their dark matter quarry.

The COUPP experiment also proved that dusting off an old technology of particle physics, the bubble chamber, offers extraordinary potential as a tool in the search for dark matter.

"Our first results are extremely encouraging, and bubble-chamber technology is eminently scale-able," said Juan Collar, a University of Chicago professor and spokesman of the COUPP collaboration, which includes 16 scientists and students from the University of Chicago; Indiana University South Bend; and DOE's Fermilab. "We expect that COUPP will soon have a sweeping sensitivity to dark matter particles, simultaneously exploring both spin-dependent and spin-independent mechanisms for dark matter interaction. This is just one of the aspects that set our experiment apart from the competition."

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Orbach presents FY2009 budget request to HEPAP

Ray Orbach is the Under Secretary for Science at the U.S. Department of Energy

On Thursday, Feb. 14, DOE Under Secretary for Science Dr. Raymond L. Orbach presented on the FY2009 budget request to the High Energy Physics Advisory Panel. His presentation, "FY 2009 Budget Request for the Office of Science and Perspectives," is available here.

SLAC Director Emeritus Awarded the 2007 AAAS Philip Hauge Abelson Prize

From SLAC, Feb. 14, 2008

Professor Burton Richter has been named the winner of the 2007 Philip Hauge Abelson Prize by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). The prize will be awarded to Richter by AAAS President David Baltimore and CEO Alan I. Leshner at the 174th AAAS Meeting in Boston, Massachusetts, on Saturday, Feb. 16, 2008.

Richter, a Nobel Laureate (Physics, 1976), is the Paul Pigott Professor in the Physical Sciences Emeritus at Stanford University, Senior Fellow at the University's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, and Director Emeritus at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center.

The AAAS Philip Hauge Abelson Prize is awarded annually to either a public servant in recognition of sustained exceptional contributions to advancing science, or a scientist whose career has been distinguished for scientific achievement and other notable services to the scientific community. Richter will be awarded the prize "for his world-class contributions to research, his successful management of a leading scientific laboratory, and his unrelenting efforts to advance science and to promote its responsible use in shaping public policy."

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