Tuesday, Aug. 23, 2011
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Tuesday, Aug. 23
10:30 a.m.
Research Techniques Seminar - Curia II
Speaker: Corrado Gatto, INFN Naples
Title: Dual Readout Calorimetry with Heavy Glasses in the T1015 Collaboration
3:30 p.m.
DIRECTOR'S COFFEE BREAK - 2nd Flr X-Over
THERE WILL BE NO ACCELERATOR PHYSICS AND TECHNOLOGY SEMINAR TODAY

Wednesday, Aug. 24
3:30 p.m.
DIRECTOR'S COFFEE BREAK - 2nd Flr X-Over
4 p.m.
Fermilab Colloquium - One West
Speaker: Michael Lubell, American Physical Society/City College of New York
Title: Science: What the Public is Thinking, What Congress is Doing, How You Can Contribute

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Wilson Hall Cafe

Tuesday, Aug. 23

- Breakfast: Bagel sandwich
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Wednesday, Aug. 24
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From symmetry breaking

Physicist tapes together particle data

Selex on exhibit at the Chicago Art Department. Selex is made from 400 data storage tapes from Fermilab’s charmed baryon experiment Selex. It’s part of the exhibit Tape: A Celebration. Photo courtesey of the Chicago Art Department

Magnetic tape, the transformative medium that made it possible for 1990s teenagers to commit carefully curated pop songs to cassettes and present them like audio billets-doux to their crushes, has long been superannuated by hard drives. Getting a mix from Pandora just isn’t the same.

The difference in sensibility is just as true for physics experiments.

As homage to tape and physics, MIT postdoctoral associate Teppei Katori, who works at Fermilab, created the art piece Selex. Named for a fixed-target charmed baryon experiment that ran in Fermilab’s Tevatron from 1996 to 1997, Selex is part of the exhibit "Tape: A Celebration" currently showing at the Chicago Art Department in the city’s Pilsen neighborhood.

“It’s the only digital tape piece in the exhibit,” Katori says, noting that the exhibit’s other dozen or so pieces are related to analog tape. “There are no analog tapes in particle physics. I’m a bit biracial.”

In Selex, Katori’s intent is to capture the sharpness and precision needed in science data, creating clean lines and stark contrast using 400 actual data storage tapes from the Selex experiment.

Read more

—Leah Hesla

Photo of the Day

The Dark Energy Camera's new home - Blanco telescope

The Dark Energy Camera will be installed in the Blanco telescope, seen on the left, shortly. The telescope resides in Chile. Photo: Brenna Flaugher
In the News

Giant camera will hunt for signs of dark energy

From NPR's All Things Considered,
Aug. 22, 2011

A giant and powerful digital camera is about to be shipped from a lab near Chicago to a telescope in Chile to study a mysterious part of the universe called dark energy.

Dark energy makes up most of our universe, but scientists currently know almost nothing about it except that it seems to be making the expansion of our universe speed up.

"There's enough data that people know what we don't understand, but there's not enough data to explain it yet," says Brenna Flaugher, a physicist at Fermilab near Chicago, which assembled the Dark Energy Camera. "There's too much room for the theorists to come up with crazy ideas right now. And so there's lots of crazy ideas. And we need data."

That's where this new 570-megapixel camera comes in. Flaugher says its basic technology would be familiar to anyone who uses a digital point-and-shoot.

Read more

In the News

Higgs boson may be a mirage, scientists hint

From Reuters, Aug. 22, 2011

Scientists chasing a particle they believe may have played a vital role in creation of the universe indicated on Monday they were coming to accept it might not exist after all.

But they stressed that if the so-called Higgs boson turns out to have been a mirage, the way would be open for advances into territory dubbed "new physics" to try to answer one of the great mysteries of the cosmos.

The CERN research center, whose giant Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has been the focus of the search, said it had reported to a conference in Mumbai that possible signs of the Higgs noted last month were now seen as less significant.

A number of scientists from the center went on to make comments that raised the possibility that the mystery particle might not exist.

Read more

Director's Corner

Lepton Photon 2011

Fermilab scientists met with Srikumar Banerjee, the secretary of the Department of Atomic Energy, and directors of Indian national laboratories in the Commission Room of the DAE.

The Lepton Photon Symposium (LP2011) taking place in in Mumbai, India, is the principal international meeting in particle physics this year. It is the 25th Lepton Photon symposium in a series of conferences that alternate yearly with the International High Energy Physics (ICHEP) meetings. It is taking place at the Tata Institute for Fundamental Research (TIFR), one of the principal science institutions in India with a rich scholarly tradition going back to its founder Homi Bhabha, a name familiar to all high-energy physicists. TIFR was founded in 1945 and operates under the umbrella of the Department of Atomic Energy.

In the opening ceremony of LP2011, we heard several speeches given by the Honorable Shri Prithviraj Chavan, the Chief Minister of the State of Maharashtra, Srikumar Banerjee, Secretary of the Department of Atomic Energy and our own Patricia McBride, chair of the C11 Committee of the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics, under whose auspices the conference is taking place. In his address, Chavan explained the emphasis that India is placing on science and technology. Chavan said they are ”increasing the scientific temper of the masses.” One new scholarship program awards the top one percent of the 25 million graduating high school students who choose science and technology careers. Those students will receive scholarships to support their education through the completion of graduate school.

The conference started with a set of talks covering the updates on the searches for the Higgs at the LHC and the Tevatron. The results from the LHC were also announced in a press release. The rapid increase in luminosity for each LHC experiment made the expected combination of results shown at EPS HEP-2011 irrelevant. The hints presented at EPS HEP-2011 have become weaker with more data. There is now strong evidence from these experiments that the Higgs cannot be above a mass of about 145 GeV and, if it exists at all, it will be in the range of 115 GeV to 145 GeV, consistent with the indirect measurements obtained from the precise measurements of the top quark and W boson masses at the Tevatron. At the lowest masses within this allowed range of 115 to 145 GeV, the Higgs decays predominantly to b-quark pairs, a channel in which the Tevatron limits will remain more stringent than the LHC limits for the next several months.

On Monday afternoon we met with Srikumar Banerjee, the secretary of the Department of Atomic Energy, and several directors of Indian Laboratories to discuss the progress in our collaboration on Project X and how we move forward both on the accelerator and the experimental fronts. We greatly appreciate the strong support for Project X that we receive from Indian institutions. Together, we’ve made progress in our collaboration during the last several years.

Accelerator Update

Aug. 20-22

- Five stores provided ~29.75 hours of luminosity
- Booster had RF and kicker problems
- DZero cold compressor tripped off
- Tevatron aborted once and quenched once
- Tevatron developed A17 vacuum leak

Read the Current Accelerator Update
Read the Early Bird Report
View the Tevatron Luminosity Charts

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Fermilab singers concert - Aug. 24

Yoga - begins today

Free webinar: Hackers, scammers, phishers… oh my! - Aug. 24

FermiMail brown bags - Aug. 24 and 26

Creative writing group - every other Thursday through Aug. 25 in WH4SE "Abacus"

Blackthorn: Traditional Celtic band - Aug. 27

What’s new in Mathematica 8? - Aug. 31

An introduction to Mathematica for engineers - Aug. 31

Bohr and Heisenberg at Elgin Arts Theatre - Sept. 16 through 25

All blood types needed, especially B-, AB-, O- and B+, please help if you can

Fermi Kyuki-Do martial arts session

Nordic walking at Fermilab

Bowlers wanted for 2011/2012 bowling season

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