Fermilab on the power of antimatter, Angels & Demons

When Ron Howard's new film "Angels & Demons" starring Tom Hanks hits movie screens on May 15 viewers will see a fictionalized view of antimatter as a doomsday device.

Matter and antimatter notoriously destroy one another upon contact, making antimatter a favorite weapon in science fiction.

While the depiction of antimatter in "Angels & Demons" is far from real, the material is. And unlike its pop culture reputation, antimatter isn't bad. In fact, it can help diagnose disease, fight cancer and uncover how the universe created structure from free flowing energy.

Antimatter is one of the most expensive materials in the world to produce. It requires a particle accelerator that generates six billion electron volts of power and a vacuum storage container, which keeps the antimatter from touching air or other regular matter.

And most of it is here in Chicagoland.

Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia produces and stores the world's most antimatter for a significant amount of time.

Scientists from Fermilab will explain antimatter's medical and research uses as well as its safe and complex production during a lecture at 8 p.m. on May 21 in Ramsey Auditorium. Scientists will also discuss the truths and falsities of antimatter and particle physics that are described in Dan Brown's best-selling book.

Tickets cost $5 and are available by calling (630)840-2787.

For more information visit the lecture Web site.

Learn more about antimatter in an eight-minute podcast by Keith Gollwitzer, head of Fermilab's antimatter production, http://www.fnal.gov/pub/today/antimatter.mp3

Read more information about antimatter in a symmetrybreaking article.

-- Tona Kunz

Tree planted in physicist's honor

On Monday, April 27, approximately 30 people gathered at the Fermilab soccer field to plant a tree in honor of Doug Moehs, a Fermilab physicist who lost a battle with cancer in November 2007. Larry Allen, from AD's Linac Group, submitted this photo of a plaque that was placed next to the tree.

Using crab cavities, KEKB breaks luminosity world record

From Interactions.org, May 11, 2009

A team of accelerator physicists at the KEK High Energy Physics Laboratory in Tsukuba, Japan, has broken the world's luminosity record by utilizing new accelerator devices called "crab cavities." The team at the KEKB electron-positron collider, home to the world's highest luminosity particle accelerator, installed the first pair of these futuristic superconducting radio-frequency cavities over two years ago.

Until 2007, the electron and positron bunches in the KEKB accelerator beams crossed at a 22 milliradian angle. The crossing angle itself has been one of the novel features of KEKB design, providing an effective beam separation after collision without a high detector background level, and it has been successfully used to achieve its world luminosity record. To boost the luminosity further, however, it was necessary to recover an effective head-on collision while retaining the crossing angle.

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FY 2010 Department of Energy Office of Science request

From AIP FYI, May 8, 2009

Describing the Department of Energy as "a science and technology house," Energy Secretary Steven Chu appeared at an afternoon briefing yesterday to describe the major components of the FY 2010 Department of Energy budget request. Saying that the $26.4 billion request invests in the Obama Administration's priorities of climate change policy, economic prosperity, national security and legacy, clean and secure energy, and science/discovery/innovation, Chu said that a "science core" was at the center of all the department's activities.

The first of Secretary Chu's exhibits set the stage for his remaining presentation. Entitled, as were all of the exhibits, "New Energy for America's Economy," it projected non-hydroelectric renewable generation beyond 2028. "On track to double production of renewable generation in next few years," the exhibit stated. This production is predicted to be significantly higher than it would have been because of the economic stimulus act funding - in the case of wind generation, twice as much as it would have been in 2012.

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