Fermilab director measures long-term goals against search for Higgs boson

From The Beacon News, Sept. 15, 2010

BATAVIA -- For years, the physicists at Fermilab have been in search of the elusive Higgs boson, the particle that may explain why matter has mass. Lab Director Pier Oddone calls it a central question of physics, one he would love the chance to answer.

But not, he says, at the cost of the lab's future.

Even Oddone admits it's quite a dilemma. Fermilab's massive underground collider, the Tevatron, is scheduled to shut down in September 2011, having been surpassed in power by the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Switzerland. So Fermilab is gearing up to pull the plug and turn its focus to other experiments, those involving neutrinos and muons. These experiments, Oddone says, are the way forward for the premier physics lab in the country.

But that means losing the chance to find the Higgs, popularly dubbed the "God particle." And that's a chance a group of senior physicists from around the world believe Fermilab should not pass up.

The group, called the Physics Advisory Committee, meets three times a year to advise the lab on pressing issues. The advisory committee was called into service for a special meeting on Aug. 27, where they were asked to consider the pros and cons of keeping the Tevatron running through 2013.

They were informed that doing so might delay the other important experiments at Fermilab and were told that the federal government might not fund the ongoing Tevatron work. Their recommendation was to keep looking for the Higgs, regardless, calling it the "most important issue in high-energy physics." Especially now, the report emphasizes, when the Large Hadron Collider is preparing to shut down for repairs.

Oddone can see several reasons to keep the Tevatron going. For one, the readings it produces are different than the ones coming out of the LHC, so the two machines together have a much better chance of locating the Higgs for certain. He knows it's not a race -- the LHC is by far the more powerful machine -- but in an ideal world, the readings from both colliders could be used to pinpoint the slippery particle.

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Service Award - 10 years

Pictured above are employees who achieved 10 years of service last year (2009). They celebrated with a luncheon at Chez Leon last Monday. Front row from left: Doug Glenzinski, Rick Tesarek, Paul Ronning, Maria Martinez, William Frank, Paul Sedory, Ping Wang and Thomas Page. Second row from left: William Badgett, Thomas Shaddix, Louvie Nelson, Brian Slatton, Laura Stover, Leslie Peters, Scott Reeves and Kuldeep Sra.Third row from left: Randy Ortgiesen, Bill Dymond, Russ Alber, Brad Trygar, Ken Quinn, Deborah Harris, Patrick Karns and Bruce Chrisman.

Indian Creek Road closed until 3 p.m. today and Friday

Indian Creek Road will be closed at MI-8 from 7 a.m. - 3 p.m. on Thursday, Sept. 16, and Friday, Sept. 17. Access to MI-10 will be available via Kautz Road during these periods.

Explain it in 60 seconds: redshift

Redshift is the observed change in the color of light emitted by a star or other celestial object that is moving away from Earth.

Light, like sound, travels in waves that are stretched or compressed when the source or the observer is in motion. Imagine a passing train blowing its horn: You hear a high-pitched sound as it approaches and a low-pitched sound as it recedes. The approaching sound waves are compressed and the receding sound waves are stretched, causing you to hear different frequencies.

You experience a similar effect with light emitted by a moving object. The wavelength of light appears shorter for an approaching object and longer for a receding one. In the visible spectrum of light, the longest wavelengths are red, so the light from a receding source is said to be "redshifted."

In the 1990s, astronomers measuring the redshifts of distant, bright objects discovered that they are farther away than one would have expected from the expansion of the universe as influenced by gravity alone. Confirmed by more recent observations, the discovery means that the universe is expanding at an increasing rate. This accelerated expansion is thought to be caused by dark energy, the physical nature of which is one of the most compelling mysteries of modern science.

--Joe Bernstein, Argonne National Laboratory

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