NOvA experimenters busy in 2009

A stack of 53-foot- long plastic extrusions ready to be loaded onto a semi-trailer.

NOvA experimenters will converge on the MINOS surface building at Fermilab this year as physicists use it as a testing ground for the design of their 15,000 ton detector before taking it underground in Minnesota.

This next-generation neutrino project will send a beam of subatomic particles from Fermilab 450 miles underground to a detector in Minnesota. NOvA will test some of the most fundamental questions in particle physics: How did matter survive after the Big Bang, allowing for the formation of a matter-dominated universe?

In essence, NOvA will delve into how the universe evolved by studying how neutrinos can toggle among different neutrino types during the subterranean trip from Fermilab to the Northern detector. NOvA also will study how the masses of those types are ordered in a hierarchy.

NOvA is the only long-baseline, near-future experiment to study mass hierarchy. The results could give weight to a specific theory of unification – how the four fundamental forces of nature meld together at high energies, such as just after the Big Bang. Homing in on a specific unification theory would narrow the area physicists should search to look for physics beyond the Standard Model, the current understanding of particles and forces.

But before researchers can test unification theories, they need to test quality, using three full-size prototypes of small sections of the mammoth detector. The work follows an approved long-term procurement and construction timeline.

At the same time, Fermilab will upgrade the accelerator system for the new beam, and other collaborators from Fermilab and in Minnesota will ready the detector hall in Ash River, Minn., on the Canadian border.

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--Tona Kunz

A Fearlessly Creative Workforce

From symmetry magazine, December 2008

Theoretical physicist Jorge Lopez was looking forward to working with the world’s largest atom smasher—the Superconducting Super Collider, then under construction in Texas—when Congress pulled the plug on the project in 1993. With the biggest opportunity in his field gone, he decided to give industry a look.

At his first job interview, he found himself explaining his work on string theory—a theory that attempts to unify all the fundamental forces but requires at least 11 dimensions, rather than the four currently observed—to a Shell Oil representative.

To his surprise, this esoteric chat didn’t sabotage the interview.

“I got a job offer that day,” Lopez says. “I guess I impressed them as someone who could address different problems and solve them. I’ve met a lot of people who have similar stories to mine, and some even work on my team.”

Unbeknownst to many, high-energy physics serves as a training pipeline for industries such as medicine, security, and finance that touch everyday lives.

Rather than mourn this migration of physicists, engineers, and computer analysts into the broader society, the field sees it as added value—a way to give back to taxpayers and the community.

“People may be your most important product,” Michael Holland, who reviews science projects for the US Office of Management and Budget, told employees and users at Fermilab in June. “They create an important element of the national innovation system.”

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