Thomas "TJ" Baird retires

Thomas "TJ" Baird

Mention "TJ the hound-dog" at the property office and you're guaranteed to get a smile.

"They call me the hound-dog because I hounded everyone to keep track of their property!" said Thomas Baird.

Baird, who was born and raised in the area, retired in June after 37 years. He started at Fermilab in 1971 as a truck driver delivering gas cylinders around the Tevatron ring and then moved in 1987 to work as a material specialist.

Baird inventoried items on Fermilab's 6,800-acre site to help minimize waste and account for taxpayer-paid property. The job required him to spend his days out of the office, seeking out items lost in moves or forgotten over time.

"Not many people can claim to have been in every building or walked the length of every tunnel and enclosure at Fermilab. He was one of the few," said the Property Office's Todd Wagner. "He was quite a character."

Baird kept track of everything from giant, immobile magnets and vacuum tubes to handheld calculators.

"When he showed up, if you had anything without a property tag, you had better watch out. That man was relentless," said the Computing Division's Keith Coiley, a colleague for 35 years.

"We'd take a notepad and climb down into those dusty manholes you see along the beamline on the A-1 Road," Baird said. "Then we'd squeeze in these little equipment-filled rooms and search for a little gold tag with a property number."

To find those elusive property tags, Baird climbed ladders, crawled on his hands and knees and scooted on his back to see the undersides of big machines.

"I loved going out and hunting for stuff," Baird said. "I told my boss that if I get bored, maybe I'll have to come back part-time."

-- Jennifer L. Johnson

Fermilab Today celebrates publication's fifth birthday

Fermilab Today editor Rhianna Wisniewski and Fermilab Today's first editor, Elizabeth Clements, blow out candles Aug. 1 in honor of the fifth year of the publication.

Large Hadron Collider turns on Sept. 10, tests beam on weekend

From Popular Mechanics, Aug. 7, 2008

The only data the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has produced thus far is a powerful (but debunked) urban myth-that the particle accelerator buried under the Swiss-French border will generate apocalyptic black holes.

But today, the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) has announced that the LHC will go online on September 10. On that day, researchers will activate particle beams within the 17-mile-long ring, and the world's most powerful-and most talked about-particle accelerator will begin collecting experimental data. The LHC's research potential is staggering, with physicists hoping to use the accelerator's extremely high-energy proton collisions to generate a range of theoretical particles. Some of those particles could help us to understand the nature of mass, including the as-yet-undetectable dark matter that accounts for so much of the universe's mass. Other particles might prove the existence of extra dimensions, or lead to entirely new theories or physical laws (this musical explanation gives a good introduction to the LHC).

Until its debut in September, and possibly for the entire lifespan of the LHC, rumors of its doomsday potential are likely to persist, fueled by reports of its unprecedented power and potential. Physicists have pointed out that the microscopic black holes the collider could generate would disappear almost instantly, without wreaking any havoc on the accelerator or the rest of world. But for anyone convinced that the LHC's impending activation is a countdown to doomsday, the hand-wringing should commence this weekend, when the accelerator will host its first actual particle beam. As part of a scheduled injection test, the LHC will be closed off this Friday, and researchers at CERN will fire protons through one of the eight sectors that make up the sprawling concrete-lined collider tunnel.

The purpose of this test? "It's, 'Let's see what happens,' " says Judy Jackson, head of the Office of Communications at Fermilab. "It's a very complex machine. This is a step towards getting ready."

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