Thursday, Oct. 9, 2014
spacer
Search
spacer
Calendar

Have a safe day!

Thursday, Oct. 9

2:30 p.m.
Theoretical Physics Seminar - Curia II
Speaker: Yue Zhang, California Institute of Technology
Title: From the Higgs Boson to the Origin of Matter in the Universe

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

Friday, Oct. 10

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

4 p.m.
Joint Experimental-Theoretical Physics Seminar - One West
Speaker: Gray Rybka, University of Washington
Title: Toward a Measurement of Neutrino Masses with Cyclotron Radiation Emission Spectroscopy: First results from Project 8

Visit the labwide calendar to view Fermilab events

Weather
Weather Slight chance of rain
58°/38°

Extended forecast
Weather at Fermilab

Current Flag Status

Flags at full staff

Wilson Hall Cafe

Thursday, Oct. 9

- Breakfast: Canadian bacon, egg and cheese Texas toast
- Breakfast: Greek omelet
- Ranch house sterak sandwich
- Sweet and sour apricot chicken
- Barbecue pork spareribs
- Rustic club flatbread sandwich
- General Tso's chicken
- Chef's choice soup
- Beef and rice soup
- Assorted pizza by the slice

Wilson Hall Cafe menu

Chez Leon

Friday, Oct. 10
Dinner
Guest chefs: Grace and Gary Leonard
- Mushroom and wild rice soup
- Tunisian fishcakes with aioli couscous
- Grilled asparagus
- Carottes rapees
- Praline pumpkin pie

Wednesday, Oct. 15
Lunch
- Orange glazed pork tenderloin
- Cranberry tabbouleh
- Snap pea saute
- Apple crisp

Chez Leon menu
Call x3524 to make your reservation.

Archives

Fermilab Today

Director's Corner

Frontier Science Result

Physics in a Nutshell

Tip of the Week

User University Profiles

Related content

Info

Fermilab Today
is online at:
www.fnal.gov/today/

Send comments and suggestions to:
today@fnal.gov

Visit the Fermilab
home page

Unsubscribe from Fermilab Today

Feature

Pace Call-n-Ride service between Fermilab and Geneva Metra station begins Monday

Pace is now offering direct shuttle service to and from Fermilab. Image courtesy of Pace

Shuttle service between Fermilab and a train station has finally arrived.

On Monday, Oct. 13, a new train station shuttle service for the Fermilab community will begin.

Pace's Call-n-Ride bus service is expanding to Fermilab, areas of Batavia and the Geneva Metra train station on the Union Pacific West line.

Pace charges a fee of $1.75 for a one-way ride. Exact fare is required. The Pace driver will not make change. Cash and Ventra payments are accepted.

There will be two scheduled runs from the Geneva Metra station to the east ground-floor entrance of Wilson Hall in the morning.

Departs Geneva Metra station Arrives Wilson Hall east ground floor
7:38 a.m. 7:52 a.m.
8:52 a.m. 9:06 a.m.

In the evening, there are three scheduled runs from the east ground-floor entrance of Wilson Hall to the Geneva Metra station:

Departs Wilson Hall east ground floor Arrives Geneva Metra station
4:17 p.m. 4:32 p.m.
5:11 p.m. 5:26 p.m.
6:17 p.m. 6:32 p.m.

If you plan to take one of the Fermilab scheduled runs listed above, you do not need to call ahead.

The Pace bus accommodates disabled riders.

If you'd like to make use of the Call-n-Ride service at a time other than those listed above, call 847-254-7471 and reserve your ride at least one hour in advance anytime between 6:30 a.m. and 6:50 p.m. If you'd like a ride before 7:30 a.m., please call the day before to schedule. The Pace bus will stop only at Wilson Hall's east ground-floor entrance.

For those who work somewhere other than Wilson Hall, a dedicated Fermilab taxi will be at the east ground-floor entrance of Wilson Hall at the two scheduled morning drop-off times: 7:52 a.m. and 9:06 a.m. Please inform the Fermilab driver that you will need a ride in the afternoon back to Wilson Hall to transfer to the Pace bus. Note that the Fermilab taxi will not be available for the 6:17 p.m. departure. A sign-in sheet will be available in the Fermilab taxi. If your plans change at the end of your work day, please call the taxi service at x3132 before 3 p.m.

View the Fermilab Call-n-Ride brochure for more information. If you have questions, please contact me.

Katie Kosirog, ESH&Q

Feature

Fermilab Arts Series presents Taylor 2 Dance - Saturday at 8 p.m. in Ramsey Auditorium

See the incredible, effortless skill of the Taylor 2 dance company on Saturday at Fermilab.

Renowned dancemaker Paul Taylor established Taylor 2, a portable company of six dancers, in 1993 to ensure that his works could be seen by audiences all over the world, unhindered by economic or technical limitations.

Now you can see the dance company, presented by the Fermilab Arts Series, in Ramsey Auditorium on Saturday, Oct. 11, at 8 p.m.

Taylor 2, which tours extensively, has had engagements in nearly 400 cities to date. In selecting repertoire for Taylor 2, Paul Taylor chooses dances that span the broad spectrum of his work. Several of the dances performed by Taylor 2 have been reworked from the Paul Taylor Dance Company's version to enable the smaller ensemble of dancers to perform them. Critics and audiences cheer as Taylor 2 introduces the athleticism, humor and range of emotions found in Taylor's work.

Taylor, one of the seminal artists of the 20th and 21st centuries, shapes the homegrown American art of modern dance that he has helped define since he became a professional dancer and pioneering choreographer in 1954. After 60 years as artistic director of the Paul Taylor Dance Company, he blazed a new trail in 2014 by establishing an institutional home for the art form: Paul Taylor's American Modern Dance. At an age when most artists' best work is behind them, Taylor continues to win public and critical acclaim for the vibrancy, relevance and power of his dances.

Tickets for the performance are $28 or $14 for those 18 and under. They are available online or by calling the Fermilab Cultural Events box office at 630-840-2787.

This performance is dedicated to the memory of Nancy Carrigan.

In the News

NOvA's shining moment

From Science, Oct. 7, 2014

It takes a big snare to catch a subatomic ghost. The newly completed NOνA neutrino detector is the size of a warehouse — five stories tall and more than three times that long — and consists of 896 planes of extruded plastic tubes filled with 10 million liters of mineral oil. "This is the world's largest free-standing plastic structure," says Richard Tesarek, a physicist at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab), 810 kilometers away in Batavia, Illinois, which will fire a beam of the elusive, almost massless particles into the detector. Tesarek says he's applying to Guinness World Records for official recognition of the size claim.

Read more (subscription required)

Physics in a Nutshell

Neutrinos meet liquid argon

Like neon, argon is used to make colorful lighted signs. Particle physicists are now putting argon to a far more exciting use: detecting neutrinos. Image: Pslawinski

Fermilab's flagship effort is its neutrino program, which is ramping up to be the strongest in the world. This means creating the world's best neutrino detectors. To that end, scientists at Fermilab are pursuing one hot technology that is lighting up neutrino physics, detection based on cryogenic liquid argon.

At first, argon seems to be a pretty boring element. As a noble gas, it does not react chemically. Making up one percent of our atmosphere, it is its third most common component, surpassed only by nitrogen and oxygen. But don't let its mundane properties fool you. When we cool it down to extremely cold temperatures, it turns into a liquid with incredible properties for cutting-edge neutrino detectors.

For particle physics, perhaps liquid argon's most important feature is that it acts as both a target and detector for neutrinos, although it isn't the only material that can be used this way. The Super-Kamiokande experiment in Japan used water stored in a deep-underground tank as large as Wilson Hall to detect neutrinos. Here at Fermilab, the MiniBooNE experiment used a giant sphere of oil that operated much the same way as Super-Kamiokande's tank.

But with 40 protons and neutrons, liquid argon is denser than water or oil, so liquid-argon detectors see more neutrino collisions per unit volume than their oil- or water-based predecessors. That means faster measurements and consequently faster discoveries.

Another advantage of liquid argon is that, when a neutrino interacts with it and subsequently generates charged particles, it produces two separate kinds of signals; oil- or water-based detectors produce only one. One type of signal, unique to liquid argon, results from its ability to record the charged particles' trajectories.

Charged particles are created in the liquid argon after a neutrino flies in and collides with an argon nucleus. The charged debris travels through the argon and easily knocks off electrons from the neighboring atoms along its path. The electronic traces in the liquid argon are pushed by an applied electric field toward an array of wires (similar to a guitar's) on the side of the detector. The wires collect data on the particle trajectories, producing a signal.

The second signal type is one shared with oil- and water-based detection: a flash of light. When a charged particle bumps into an argon atom's electron, the electron transitions to a higher energy. As the electron transitions back to its original state, the excess energy is emitted as light.

It turns out that argon is also relatively cheap. Companies liquefy air and heat it slowly. Since each of air's components has a unique boiling temperature, they can be separated. The boiled-off argon is moved to a separate chamber where it is again condensed. The commercially available liquid argon that we buy is still not pure enough for our experiments, so once the liquid argon arrives at the lab, we filter out the remaining impurities by a factor of 10,000.

Using a common and innocuous gas, Fermilab is establishing itself to be the world's premier neutrino physics research center. Stay tuned to discover what secrets this technology will unlock!

Tia Miceli

Photo of the Day

Lunar eclipse

The Oct. 8 lunar eclipse by Wilson Hall. Photo: Marty Murphy, AD
Announcements

Today's New Announcements

Excel 2010: Intermediate - Oct. 29

Town hall: Kerberos upgrade/ CryptoCard end of life - today

NALWO annual potluck luncheon - today

Nominations for Director's Award close Oct. 10

School's Day Out camp - Oct. 10, 13

CryptoCard end of life - Oct. 11

Paul Taylor's Taylor 2 Dance in Ramsey Auditorium - Oct. 11

Barn Dance - Oct. 12

Mat Pilates class now offered at Fermilab - register by Oct. 13

Zumba Toning registration due Oct. 14

Gallery talk - Oct. 15

Ultimate Core class registration due Oct. 15

Lecture Series: Success and Failure in Engineering - Oct. 24

Writing for Results: Email and More (morning only) - Oct. 30

Managing Conflict course (morning only) - Nov. 5

NALWO Playgroup meets Wednesdays at Users Center

International folk dancing Thursday evenings at Kuhn Barn

Scottish country dancing Tuesday evenings at Kuhn Barn

English country dancing at Kuhn Barn

Indoor soccer