Wilson Hall west road to close on Wednesday

The Wilson Hall west road between the Wilson Hall Medical Office and the Linac will be closed between noon and 3 p.m. on Wednesday, April 21, due to construction.

FESS will ensure access to the Medical Office remains open.

North Aurora company Pandecon Inc. will install a new emergency generator for Wilson Hall over the next few days. On Thursday, the subcontractors will perform a check and fuel the generator. On Friday, they will run the generator for approximately four hours as a test. The generator may produce a cloud of smoke when it first turns on. Should you have any questions, please feel free to contact Tom Lackowski at x3640.

Visa holders with delayed travel - contact the Visa Office

A number of Fermilab users are discovering that their flights from the U.S. have been cancelled or rescheduled because of disruption to air service over Europe resulting from the Icelandic volcano eruption. Two groups are most affected - users admitted to the U.S. on the basis of a B-1 visa and those admitted under the visa waiver program. This should not affect users holding J or H visas or other statuses.

B-1 and visa waiver users with approaching departures (or who were unable to leave the U.S. as scheduled) should make an appointment with the Visa Office (visaoffice@fnal.gov) as soon as possible. They also should photocopy their current I-94 card and documents reflecting their current travel plans (a flight itinerary, airline tickets or other documents) and keep them in a safe place. The inability to depart the U.S. in a timely manner due to the volcanic eruption cannot be used as a reason to remain in the U.S. for longer than necessary.

The Visa Office is in communication with the Bureau of Customs and Border Protection about this matter. More specific guidance on procedures to follow will become available over the next few days.

Sandhill crane visits Fermilab

The Computing Division's Gene Oleynik took these photos of a lone sandhill crane in an area on-site just south of Eola Road. The area contains marshy water and prairie grass.

Earth Day Fair Thursday provides treats, transportation

ES&H is sponsoring an Earth Day Fair from 11 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Thursday, April 22, in the Wilson Hall atrium. Win great prizes, get free goodies, learn about volunteer opportunities and find out about on-going green programs at Fermilab. A conference held in Wilson Hall the same day will make parking even more difficult than usual. Taxi service has been increased during the fair hours to allow everyone to attend. To schedule a taxi call x4225.

Sean Carroll talks school science and time travel

From New York Times, April 19, 2010

The world of science has two Sean Carrolls. One is an evolutionary biologist. The other is a cosmologist and theoretical physicist, an expert on time and the early moments of the universe. As it happened, the physicist stopped by the offices of The New York Times on a recent March morning. Dr. Carroll, a 43-year-old research professor at the California Institute of Technology, had come to New York for an appearance on "The Colbert Report." He was in town promoting his meditation on the physics of time, a trade book with the clever title "From Eternity to Here."

Q. WHEN YOU GO TO A COCKTAIL PARTY, DO YOU TELL PEOPLE THAT YOU ARE A PHYSICIST? SOME PHYSICISTS WON'T.

A. I do! But I know what you're talking about. Whenever you say you're a physicist, there's a certain fraction of people who immediately go, "Oh, I hated physics in high school." That's because of the terrible influence of high school physics. Because of it, most people think physics is all about inclined planes and force-vector diagrams. One of the tragedies of our educational system is that we've taken this incredibly interesting subject - how the universe works - and made it boring.

Q. LEON LEDERMAN, THE NOBEL PRIZE PHYSICIST, HAS PROPOSED THAT WE REFORM HIGH SCHOOL SCIENCE BY REQUIRING PHYSICS IN THE SOPHOMORE AND NOT THE SENIOR YEAR. WILL THAT HELP - OR IS IT REARRANGING DECK CHAIRS ON THE TITANIC?

A. I don't think it's the right solution. What we need to do is find a new way to teach the spirit of physics. What we do now is water down what professional physicists do and make it into this dry puzzle-solving thing with little pictures of pulleys and things like that. We ought to teach kids more about the Big Bang and entropy and particles. Every high school graduate should know that everything in the universe is made of a handful of particles. That's not a hard thing to know. But that's not what's emphasized.

Read more