All-hands meeting today

An all-hands meeting will take place at 11 a.m. today, in Ramsey Auditorium. Director Pier Oddone will discuss the focus group reports and how the laboratory plans to address the findings.

Employees can prepare for the meeting by reading and discussing the focus group reports.

East gate closed June 22-26

Between early morning Monday, June 22, and late afternoon on Friday, June 26, Fermilab's east entrance will be closed to allow Canadian National Railway to make repairs to the tracks and crossing in that area. All traffic that normally enters through that gate will need to enter through the Pine or Wilson street gates on the west side. Check Fermilab Today for updates.

Shutdown-related power outage Monday

A power outage affecting most of the Fermilab site will take place from 7-7:30 a.m. Monday, June 22. Crews will be switching power from the master substation to the Kautz Road substation for the majority of the shutdown. All areas, except the Main Injector, will be affected.

The science of talking so people listen

University of Chicago astrophysicist Michael Turner spoke about science communication during an Outreach Workshop at Fermilab June 5.

If you study high-energy particle physics, the importance and excitement of neutrinos is obvious. But how do you convey that to an auditorium of students, a member of Congress or your neighbor?

If you're Michael Turner, a University of Chicago astrophysicist, you borrow a plot line from the classic Christmas movie, It's a Wonderful Life. "What if neutrinos had never existed?" Turner asked in a recent public outreach lecture. Then he showed the audience a world without the subatomic particles, just as the movie showed life minus the main character George Bailey.

"No neutrinos," Turner said." That means no atoms, no Earth, and no us."

Connecting science to everyday experiences in jargon free terms is key to science outreach, something Turner excels at doing. He shared his insights and tips from more than a decade worth of talks with scientists at Fermilab's annual Users' Meeting earlier this month. The meeting featured a special Outreach Workshop with talks to help scientists adjust to a changing climate that requires every scientist can explain the value of research in language a banker with no science background would understand.

In the past, science funding was virtually assured, but today HEP physicists must vie for government support with a plethora of other scientific fields amidst an economic downturn, mounting deficit and shrinking pool of media science writers to make their case.

"There is no such thing as entitlement to science funding in this society," said Herman White, a Fermilab scientist, who often meets with Washington policy makers. "You have to make an argument, and it has to be a good argument."

-- Rachel Carr

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Result of the Week author welcomes new addition

Fermilab Today congratulates CDF Result of the Week editor Craig Group and his wife, Nicole, who welcomed a son, Robert McKendree Group, into the world at 8:27 p.m. on June 17. Robert weighed 5 pounds, 7 ounces at birth.

Physicists create 'black hole for sound'

From New Scientist, June 17, 2009

An artificial black hole that traps sound instead of light has been created in an attempt to detect theoretical Hawking radiation. The radiation, proposed by physicist Stephen Hawking more than 30 years ago, causes black holes to evaporate over time.

Astrophysical black holes are created when matter becomes so dense that it collapses to a point called a singularity. The black hole's gravity is so great that nothing - not even light - can escape from a boundary around it called an event horizon.

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