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	Tuesday, Feb. 5, 2013

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Have a safe day!

Tuesday, Feb. 5

3:30 p.m.
DIRECTOR'S COFFEE BREAK - 2nd Flr X-Over

THERE WILL BE NO ACCELERATOR PHYSICS AND TECHNOLOGY SEMINAR TODAY

Wednesday, Feb. 6

3:30 p.m.
DIRECTOR'S COFFEE BREAK - 2nd Flr X-Over

4 p.m.
Fermilab Colloquium - One West
Speaker: Bradford Benson, University of Chicago
Title: Going to the End of the Earth to Learn About the Beginning of the Universe

Click here for NALCAL,
a weekly calendar with links to additional information.

Ongoing and upcoming conferences at Fermilab

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Snow
31°/12°

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Weather at Fermilab

Current Security Status

Secon Level 3

Current Flag Status

Flags at full staff

Wilson Hall Cafe

Tuesday, Feb. 5

- Breakfast: All-American breakfast
- Minnesota chicken and rice
- Carolina chopped-pork sandwich
- Beef stroganoff
- Smart cuisine: pork piccata
- California turkey panini
- Assorted pizza by the slice
- Taco salad

Wilson Hall Cafe Menu

Chez Leon

Wednesday, Feb. 6
Lunch
- Spicy black bean and sausage calzone
- Confetti corn salad
- Pineapple flan

Friday, Feb. 8
Dinner
- Bacon, boursin and spinach soufflé
- Filet mignon with morel sauce
- Grilled asparagus
- Herbed new potatoes
- Pear tart

Chez Leon Menu
Call x3524 to make your reservation.

Kids of all ages welcome at Fermilab's Family Open House on Sunday, Feb. 10

Children at last year's Fermilab Open House participate in one of the interactive exhibits put on by a local high-school student group. Photo: Cindy Arnold

On Sunday, Feb. 10, Fermilab's Wilson Hall will come alive with the sounds of science.

The U.S. Department of Energy's Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory will host its annual Family Open House on Feb. 10 from 1 to 5 p.m. The open house offers activities for the whole family, from hands-on science exhibits to tours of some of the lab's attractions.

Highlights include a performance by the always popular Jerry Zimmerman as "Mr. Freeze," demonstrating the (very) cool effects of liquid nitrogen. Kids can also check out Mike Cooke's show "FUNdamental Physics," while parents and older kids will enjoy Herman White's historical talk "Great Science on the Prairie."

About a dozen scientists will be ready to answer your questions on the 15th floor of Wilson Hall, and while you're there, you can check out the spectacular view of Fermilab's site and the surrounding area. In the atrium, families can enjoy a "physics carnival," including interactive exhibits by students from five local schools: Naperville Central and Naperville North high schools, Payson High School, and Northside College Prep and Christo Rey Jesuit high schools in Chicago.

Tours of the Linear Accelerator and Main Control Room will be given throughout the day, and tours of the SeaQuest experiment will leave Wilson Hall at 1:30, 2:30 and 3:30 p.m. Register at ed.fnal.gov/ffse_new/openhouse. There are a limited number of seats available, and standbys will be accepted.

No registration is required to attend the Family Open House. More than 2,000 people are expected to attend.

"We want to get kids doing activities that get them excited about science," said Spencer Pasero, an education program leader at Fermilab. "We want them to come in, have fun and think about science as something they could do."

The Family Open House is made possible by an anonymous donor to the nonprofit organization Fermilab Friends for Science Education.

Photo of the Day

The tail of the red-tailed hawk

A red-tailed hawk fans its tail feathers. Photo: Marty Murphy, AD

In the News

The birth of a very-high-field superconductor

From DOE Pulse, Feb. 4, 2013

The strong magnetic fields of an MRI scanner or a particle accelerator are generated efficiently by electromagnets that have superconducting wire in their coils. A group of scientists has discovered how to make better wires using a promising material known as Bi-2212. With this discovery comes the possibility of creating magnetic fields in excess of 30 Tesla, three to four times higher than those generated by present accelerator magnet technology.

Bi-2212 (Bi₂Sr₂CaCu₂O_x) is one of the copper-oxide high-temperature superconductors discovered 27 years ago. Since then, attention has focused on the use of such HTS [high-temperature superconductor] materials in electric power transmission and other electrical applications not related to high-field magnets. In those applications, Bi-2212 loses out to other HTS materials.

In the News

An atom sheds light on neutron stars

From Science News, Jan. 31, 2013

The precise measurement of an exotic atom in the laboratory has refined scientists' understanding of neutron stars, which are among the universe's most extreme objects. The study, published January 22 in Physical Review Letters, could help scientists determine whether the crusts of neutron stars serve as the source of dozens of heavy elements such as zinc, silver and gold.

"One of the universe's overriding mysteries is where heavy elements originate," says James Lattimer, an astrophysicist at Stony Brook University in New York who was not involved in the study. "These mass measurements allow us to tune our equations so we can work toward settling the debate."

Director's Corner

Updating the European Strategy for Particle Physics

Fermilab Director
Pier Oddone

Last week the first draft of the updated European Strategy for Particle Physics was made public. This document, which remains a draft until reviewed and approved by the CERN Council in May, guides our European colleagues in their exploration and development of the field of particle physics. It is an update of the very first European strategy, originally developed in 2006.

The update process, led by the European Strategy Group, has been long and inclusive. The group includes representatives of all of the CERN member countries and participation from countries with other types of formal agreements to CERN—including the United States—and the rest of the international particle physics community. Over the past year and a half, the group has solicited many discussion papers. It also held a community workshop that brought together 500 physicists to seek input and discuss the many issues and opportunities ahead for particle physics. U.S. and Fermilab physicists contributed to both efforts. A Preparatory Group worked hard to summarize the current state of our field and future opportunities in its briefing book, used by the Strategy Group to draft the updated strategy.

The draft European Strategy is a carefully crafted, three-page-long document that outlines the principal priorities for European particle physics. It touches on all aspects of the European particle physics program and is well worth a read. Here, I will concentrate on the four recommendations regarding high-priority large-scale initiatives, which contain a great deal of overlap with activities of great importance to the United States and to our lab.

The top priority is the exploitation of the LHC and the elucidation of the new physics opened by the discovery of the Higgs. Two of the other three high-priority large-scale initiatives deal with the accelerators that would follow the LHC at the Energy Frontier. High priority is given to R&D necessary for a future global machine at CERN, either a much-higher-energy proton-proton collider or a very-high-energy electron-positron collider. The other future Energy Frontier initiative is the opportunity to build the ILC in Japan. The report notes the strong physics case and the interest of European groups, and it welcomes a proposal from Japan to discuss the region's possible participation. The remaining high-priority large-scale initiative identified by the Strategy Group is long-baseline neutrino experiments to discover the neutrino mass hierarchy and search for CP violation. Its recommendation is two-fold:

"CERN should develop a neutrino programme to pave the way for a substantial European role in future long-baseline experiments. Europe should explore the possibility of major participation in leading neutrino projects in the U.S. and Japan."

We are eager to welcome our European colleagues in this exploration. There are opportunities to bring liquid-argon modules of European design to LBNE since it is an experiment that is readily extensible. The additional intellectual and physical resources would allow major enhancements even in the first phase of LBNE.

Construction Update

Preparing to install windows at the IARC OTE Building

Workers are preparing the walls of the future IARC Office, Technical and Education Building for windows. Photo: Cindy Arnold

The exterior enclosure of the IARC Office, Technical and Education Building is beginning to take shape. Here you can see where the future ribbons of windows will be. Workers have sprayed on the gray weather barrier, preparing the walls for the final enclosure layer of white corrugated panels above and below the windows.

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