Administrative employees event at 1:30 p.m. today

Managing priorities and balancing your personal and professional goals can be difficult. An event to help administrative employees achieve this work/life balance will take place at 1:30 p.m. today in One West. Marcie Stern from Vocal Consulting will give a talk titled "WAAMM! 5 Steps to Managing Your Life's Priorities." During this 90-minute presentation, Stern will teach strategies and skills to help attendees manage their priorities, align their organizational and personal goals and more. All administrative professionals are welcome.

Fermilab's CDF, DZero cite banner year at the Tevatron

Fermilab's Accelerator Division achieved two new records in late 2009. During the week of Dec. 21, the Tevatron set a record for the number of store hours: 151.25. The complex produced physics data during nine stores for a total of 151 hours. The plot shows how little time passed between each store. During that same week, the Antiproton Source produced a record number of antiprotons, equivalent to 4,033 milliamps.

As physicists from Fermilab's Tevatron collider experiments, CDF and DZero, prepare to share their newest results at upcoming winter 2010 physics conferences, they took a few moments recently to look back on the accomplishments of 2009.

"By every measure," said DZero spokesperson and University of Manchester physicist Stefan Soldner-Rembold, "the Tevatron set new records and built upon its stellar physics program of exciting discoveries and ultra-precise measurements."

Both CDF and DZero investigate proton-antiproton collisions at 2 TeV, the world's highest energy for a particle-antiparticle collider.  Combined, the two experiments involve more than 1000 scientists from about 146 institutions in 27 countries. They have been operating the CDF and DZero experiments since 2001. The two collaborations expect to continue taking data through 2011, doubling the number of collisions that each experiment analyzed for their 2009 results.

"The Fermilab accelerator complex has continued to operate in superb fashion," said CDF spokesperson Rob Roser. "The Tevatron set many new records for the number of collisions per second and the number of collisions delivered to experiments in a given week, month and year.  The Tevatron has now substantially exceeded its design parameters, providing CDF and DZero physicists with ever-expanding scientific opportunities."

In the final week of 2009, the Fermilab accelerator complex set a lifetime record for the hours of collider operation in a single week, producing 151 hours of physics data.

The experiments have made good use of the torrent of data. In 2009, they published more than 100 scientific papers and presented more than 150 new results at physics conferences all over the world.  Major highlights include the discovery of the production of single top quarks in the first observation of this extremely rare process. The collaborations made the world's most precise measurement of the top-quark and W-boson masses with a precision of less than 1 percent and 1 per mille, respectively; and they observed and studied new particles containing b quarks.  By combining their data, the CDF and DZero experiments also reached important new conclusions on the possible mass of the proposed Higgs particle, now excluding a mass range near that of twice the mass of the W boson (162-166 GeV/c²).

Read more

-- Judy Jackson

Kids have a blast learning science at Fermilab event

From the Beacon News, Feb. 24, 2010

A thick white fog poured from the top of the plastic bottle, as Jerry Zimmerman -- who goes by the name Mr. Freeze -- asked a very important question.

"Are you ready?" he shouted, and the chorus of children gathered in Fermilab's Ramsey Auditorium replied with an exuberant "Yeeeaaahhh!"

With a flourish, Mr. Freeze capped the bottle, which contained water and liquid nitrogen, boiling at a mind-numbingly cold -320 degrees.

He quickly shoved the bottle into a cardboard box full of newspapers, and then stood back. With a deafening crack, the bottle and box both exploded, sending paper and cardboard flying all over the stage.

The children, of course, were delighted, oohing, aahing and applauding.

Read more

Fermilab Open House 2010 video highlights

Watch video highlights of this year's Fermilab Open House here.