High rise lights go out for Earth Hour

Fermilab will shut off all nonessential lights in Wilson Hall between 8:30-9:30 p.m. Saturday, March 28, as part of Earth Hour.

Fermilab's Wilson Hall stands 15 stories above the surrounding prairie, serving as a beacon for the northwestern suburbs.

For one hour on Saturday, March 28, the building will boost its energy conservation efforts by joining businesses, organizations and homes around the world in darkness.

Earth Hour, a global 60 minutes without electricity, delivers a powerful message about the need for action to pull the plug on global warming.

"Turning off the lights in Wilson Hall is a visible reminder that there is an issue that we need to be concerned about," said Rod Walton, Fermilab's ecologist.

All nonessential lights in Wilson Hall will shut off at 8:30 p.m. Lights necessary for safety, such as those in stairwells, and those needed to run experiments will remain on. Those who need to work on Saturday night should try to do so before or after 8:30-9:30 p.m. If you must work during that time, please remember to switch lights off when done. As an extra measure of compliance, all nonessential lights switched on after 8:30 p.m. will shut off again at midnight.

Wilson Hall building manager John Kent hopes that employees will do their part by turning off personal computers, task lights or any other personal electronics before leaving for the weekend.

"We participated as part of Chicago's Earth Hour event last year, which cut the metropolitan area's energy consumption by 7 percent, or 818-megawatt hours, according to ComEd," Walton said.

That is the carbon equivalent of 1.3 pounds of carbon dioxide or taking more than 1 million cars off the road for one hour.

Already this year, nearly 1,600 cities and towns in 80 countries have signed on to participate in this year's event.

"If the entire world does it, we're in good shape," Walton said.

For more information on Earth Hour, visit www.earthhour.org. Building managers interested in participating can contact John Kent, x4753, jwkent@fnal.gov. Contact Rod Walton, x2565, rwalton@fnal.gov or Eric Mieland, x2248, mieland@fnal.gov with questions.

-- Rhianna Wisniewski

All-hands meeting at 11 a.m. Friday in Ramsey Auditorium

Fermilab Director Pier Oddone will speak about the laboratory's plans at an All-hands meeting at 11 a.m. in Ramsey Auditorium on Friday. Overflow seating will be available in One West. All employees should plan to attend.

Meet Stephen Hawking, children's author

From New Scientist, March 18, 2009

Stephen Hawking barely needs an introduction, but his recent direction does. He is packaging the universe for the younger generation. With his daughter Lucy Hawking, he has branched out into writing children's books. They tell Alison George all about it, and recount Stephen's personal alien experience.

Everyone's got a copy of A Brief History of Time, but few have finished it. If we engage children in science young enough, will this change?

Stephen Hawking: The book aroused a great deal of interest, although many people found it difficult to understand. But I believe everyone can, and should, have a broad picture of how the universe operates, and our place in it. This is what I have tried to convey in all my popular books.

It is extremely important to me to write for children. Children ask how things do what they do, and why. Too often they are told that these are stupid questions to ask, but this is said by grown-ups who don't know the answers and don't want to look silly by admitting they don't know. It is important that young people keep their sense of wonder and keep asking why. I'm a child myself, in the sense that I'm still looking. Children are fascinated by black holes and ask me questions. I find they soon get the idea if it is explained in simple language. And yes, it is nice to think a few of them might grow up and read A Brief History from cover to cover.

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Particle Hunters

From NPR's Science Friday, March 13, 2009

NPR's Ira Flatow talks about the CDF and DZero experiments' disccoveries of single top quarks. Flatow also talks to DZero collaborator and Northwestern University physics professor Heidi Schellman about the DZero collaboration's refinement of the W mass measurement.

Researchers announced this week that they've detected the production of single top quarks at Fermilab. The production of single top quarks has been predicted by the Standard Model of physics, but such events hadn't been definitely seen before. Now, two groups using different detectors at Fermilab have spotted the production of the single particles, which is governed by the weak interaction. Observing a single top quark gives physicists more information about the top quarks and the other particles that pair with them.

The lab also announced this week that they've refined their measurement for the mass of the W-boson, a value that helps define the window for the search for the Higgs boson. We'll talk about the work and the search for other, still more exotic particles such as the Higgs. Teachers, find more information about using Science Friday as a classroom resource in the Kids' Connection.

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