New Scientist article featuring Craig Hogan is most read

Cover of the Jan. 17, 2009 issue of New Scientist

A New Scientist cover article featuring the research of Craig Hogan, Fermilab's head of the Center for Particle Astrophysics, has become the publication's most popular news story ever. The article, which features Hogan's possible solution to a problem plaguing the GEO600 experiment, received one third of all traffic to New Scientist's Web site on Friday.

Craig Hogan

According to the article, Hogan believes that the German-British gravitational wave detector has discovered the fundamental limit of space-time. If he's right, the results could mean that we actually live in a giant cosmic hologram.

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Fermilab team completes
3.9-GHz cavity string

The assembled four-cavity string for the 3.9-GHz cryomodule.

In Friday's Fermilab Today, we ran an ILC Newsline article from Jan. 8 about progress on the 3.9-GHz cryomodule cavity string.

We received an update that the fourth cavity was successfully tested and installed into the string of cavities pictured above in the MP-9 clean room. The cavity string will be moved for module assembly today.

The Fermilab team, led by Helen Edwards and Elvin Harms, Jr., has worked for years to assemble the cavities. It hopes to ship the completed cryomodule to DESY in March where it will be used in the FLASH free-electron laser.

"This will be the first truly Fermilab built superconducting RF module," Harms said.

The collaboration with DESY was Fermilab's first experience in producing this type of cavity, which stores radio-frequency energy to power particles passing through the cryomodule. The knowledge the team has received from assembling the cavities can later be applied to building cavities for the Fermilab's proposed proton accelerator, Project X.

ESA seeks to join US dark energy mission

From Nature, Jan. 16, 2009

Deal would boost JDEM budget but scupper Europe's Euclid.

The European Space Agency (ESA) is seeking a slot as the third partner in the Joint Dark Energy Mission (JDEM), alongside two US agencies already involved - NASA and the Department of Energy (DOE). A deal would boost the budget as well as the flight chances for the space telescope, which, launched sometime next decade, would peer beyond the Milky Way to pin down the mysterious force which is accelerating the universe's expansion. However, a merger would spell the end for Euclid, a proposed stand-alone ESA dark energy mission.

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