Attend the 2010 Women in Science Symposium April 17

Women are statistically underrepresented in the science workforce nationwide. The Women in Science Symposium 2010: Building an Identity will discuss this fact and the issues that contribute to the shortage from 8:30 a.m.-5 p.m. on Saturday, April 17.

During thyis daylong event, learn more about the state of women in science and why more women aren't pursuing careers in the scientific workforce. Also, discuss what changes are taking place, and need to take place to successfully reshape the scientific workforce landscape so that it includes more women during this daylong event.

Fermilab will cover the registration fee for any Fermilab employees who want to attend.

The event, which is open to scientists, communicators, educators, administrators and anyone interested in the shortage of women in scientific careers, will take place on the Chicago campus of Northwestern University.

The symposium, which is sponsored by The Chicago Council on Science and Technology (C2ST) in partnership with the Association for Women in Science (AWIS), will allow women scientists at the academic, industry and government levels to better recognize the numbers of and diversity of their counterparts. Women scientists attending the event can create a sense of solidarity and help find ways to broaden the available opportunities for women scientists in Chicagoland.

View the symposium agenda Web page to learn more about the event. Use the Fermilab code "FNALWIS" when you register.

Sitewide Emergency Warning System test cancelled today

Due to the potential severe weather that may affect the laboratory today, the regularly scheduled test of the Sitewide Emergency Warning System is cancelled. The next regularly scheduled test of the SEWS will take place at 10 a.m. on the first Tuesday of next month.

A primer on the great proton smashup

From the New York Times, April 2, 2010

For those whose physics knowledge was a bit rusty, the news about the Large Hadron Collider, the world's biggest physics machine, might have been puzzling.

Yes, the collider finally crashed subatomic particles into one another last week, but why, exactly, is that important? Here is a primer on the collider - with just enough information, hopefully, to impress guests at your next cocktail party.

Let's be basic. What does a particle physicist do?

Particle physicists have one trick that they do over and over again, which is to smash things together and watch what comes tumbling out.

What does it mean to say that the collider will allow physicists to go back to the Big Bang? Is the collider a time machine?

Physicists suspect that the laws of physics evolved as the universe cooled from billions or trillions of degrees in the first moments of the Big Bang to superfrigid temperatures today (3 degrees Kelvin) - the way water changes from steam to liquid to ice as temperatures decline. As the universe cooled, physicists suspect, everything became more complicated. Particles and forces once indistinguishable developed their own identities, the way Spanish, French and Italian diverged from the original Latin.

By crashing together subatomic particles - protons - physicists create little fireballs that revisit the conditions of these earlier times and see what might have gone on back then, sort of like the scientists in Jurassic Park reincarnating dinosaurs.

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