CDF, DZero reach 5 inverse femtobarns of luminosity

Fermilab's Tevatron collider experiments, CDF and DZero, both reached 5 inverse femtobarns of luminosity this week. The experiments have been taking data since March 2001. DZero reached its integrated luminosity record on Sunday, Sept. 23. CDF reached its 5 inverse femtobarns on Thursday.

Physicists count the number of collisions produced in the Tevatron in units of inverse femtobarns.

Three years ago, on June 24, 2005, Fermilab celebrated 1 inverse femtobarn for CDF and DZero. Read more about that milestone here.

Fermilab will host Grid Fest on Friday, Oct. 3

Grid Fest will take place Oct. 3

The six experiments at the Large Hadron Collider will produce 15 million gigabytes of data every year, enough information to create a 13-mile-high stack of CDs. Fermilab will join CERN on Friday, Oct. 3, at 10:30 a.m. to launch the World wide LHC Computing Grid, the system that will distribute this data to more than 7,000 scientists across the globe.

On Oct. 3, live connections between Fermilab and CERN will demonstrate the extraordinary role of grid computing. Experts will highlight the successes and challenges of the grid, and its applications to other sciences such as medicine, climate studies, bioinformatics, nanotechnology, geography and education.

Information about the event is available at http://www.fnal.gov/gridfest/. More information about U.S. participation in the LHC and its experiments is available at http://www.uslhc.us.

Exhibit features art from science, light

This Lichtenberg figure, created by Tevatron operations specialist Todd Johnson, is currently on display as part of "Intersections: the Art and Science of Light" exhibit in the Fermilab Art Gallery.

A new exhibit in Fermilab’s Art Gallery highlights the connections between art and science.

“Intersections: the Art and Science of Light,” features works of holographic and multimedia art by Tevatron operations specialist Todd Johnson, photographer and holographer and former Fermilab researcher Ed Wesly (who worked on bubble chamber experiment E-632), and holography and light artist Lori Napoleon.

The current exhibit can ultimately be traced back to the Fermilab bubble chamber experiment in the mid-80's and the part holography played in the experiment.

In this neutrino experiment, holograms were used in tandem with more conventional photographs to capture neutrino interactions. In these high-energy interactions, the short-lived particles that were produced would decay at times on the order of 10^-13 seconds. Holography was able to provide a picture of the interaction at a higher resolution over a long depth of field than the existing photographic recording technique.

In that exhibit, all three artists present a visual history and documentation of the bubble chamber experiment. They also display other individual works.

The artists come from diverse backgrounds - engineering, education, laser optics and fine arts. It was Fermilab, the space where these interests overlap in science-inspired art, that made it possible for them to meet, collaborate and celebrate how physics and art can be mutually appreciated.

The exhibit will run through Nov. 10. A Gallery lecture will take place today from 12-1 p.m. in Curia II. An artists’ reception will take place from 5-7 p.m. tonight on the second-floor Art Gallery. Visit the Art Gallery Web site for more information.

Galaxy flow hints at huge masses over cosmic horizon

From New Scientist, Sept. 25, 2008

Hundreds of clusters of galaxies are streaming en masse towards a region at the edge of the visible universe. The discovery has taken astronomers completely by surprise because the movement is independent of the universe's expansion.

A team led by Alexander Kashlinsky of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, stumbled upon the flow while studying how galaxy clusters affect the photons of the cosmic microwave background (CMB), the radiation left over from the big bang.

Kashlinsky has dubbed the stream "dark flow" to align it with the other as yet-unexplained characteristics of the universe, dark matter and dark energy.

The discovery arose because the movement of the clusters changed the frequency of CMB photons, creating a Doppler effect, the characteristic signature of movement. "To our great surprise, we found a very weak but identifiable [Doppler] signal, significantly above the noise," Kashlinsky told New Scientist.

According to the observations, the clusters are all moving towards a patch of sky that lies between the constellations Vela and Centaurus. Some are speeding away at about 1000 kilometres per second, and it seems likely the flow continues to the edge of the visible universe.

"This motion extends all the way to at least a billion light years, and perhaps longer," says Kashlinsky. "If it already goes so far, it would be very puzzling if it just stopped."

Read more