Have a safe day!
Wednesday, Dec. 16
2 p.m.
Particle Astrophysics Seminar (NOTE DATE) - One West
Speaker: Pierre Fayet, École Normale Supérieure, Paris
Title: More on U(1) Symmetries, New Gage Boson and Light Dark Matter Particles
3:30 p.m.
DIRECTOR'S COFFEE BREAK - 2nd Flr X-Over
THERE WILL BE NO FERMILAB COLLOQUIUM THIS WEEK
Thursday, Dec. 17
2:30 p.m.
Theoretical Physics Seminar - Curia II
Speaker: Richard Hill, University of Chicago
Title: SU(3)/SU(2): The Simplest WZW Term
3:30 p.m.
DIRECTOR'S COFFEE BREAK - 2nd Flr X-Over
THERE WILL BE NO ACCELERATOR PHYSICS AND TECHNOLOGY SEMINAR TODAY
4 p.m.
Special Joint Experimental-Theoretical Physics Seminar (NOTE DATE) - One West
Speaker: Lauren Hsu, Fermilab
Title: New Results from the Cryogenic Dark Matter Search
Click here for NALCAL,
a weekly calendar with links to additional information.
Upcoming conferences |
For information about H1N1, visit Fermilab's flu information site.
|
Wednesday, Dec. 16
- Breakfast: English muffin sandwich
- Cajun-style lentil soup
- Cajun chicken ranch
- Braised pork chops
- Chicken parmesan
- Smoked turkey panini pesto mayo
- Assorted sliced pizza
- Chicken Alfredo fettuccine
Wilson Hall Cafe Menu |
Wednesday, Dec. 16
Lunch
- Stuffed flank steak
- Garlic mashed potatoes
- Cherry cheesecake
Thursday, Dec. 17
Dinner
- Red pepper soup
- Beef croustades with boursin and mushroom
- Spinach with scallions and lemon
- Roasted potatoes
- Raspberry parfait with Christmas cookies
Chez Leon Menu
Call x3524 to make your reservation.
|
|
|
Happy Holidays from Fermilab
|
Click on the image above to view the full-size holiday greeting card. Scroll down past the image for instructions on how to send the card to your friends. |
Earlier this year, Fermilab's ArgoNeuT experiment recorded signature particle tracks from neutrinos in its detector. These tracks were the first ever seen in a liquid-argon detector in the United States.
To learn more about the ArgoNeuT detector or the particle track milestone, read the July 1 issue of Fermilab Today.
|
LARP reaches magnet technology milestone
|
A focusing magnet, with quadrant slices visible, was built by LARP using advanced superconducting material. The magnet just passed a test at Fermilab showing it can withstand greater heat and energy levels that will be needed for the next phase design of the LHC. |
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN has just started producing collisions, but scientists and engineers have already made significant progress in preparing for future upgrades beyond the collider's nominal design performance, including a 10-fold increase in collision rates by the end of the next decade and, eventually, higher-energy beams.
In a test on Dec. 4, a focusing magnet built by members of the U.S. Department of Energy's multi-laboratory LHC Accelerator Research Program (LARP), using an advanced superconducting material, achieved the goal of creating a magnetic field strong enough to focus intense proton beams in the upgraded LHC interaction regions.
"This success has been made possible by the enthusiasm and dedication of many scientists, engineers, and technicians at the collaborating laboratories," said Eric Prebys of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, who heads LARP, "and by the guidance and continuous support of the U.S. Department of Energy and the encouragement and contributions of CERN and the entire accelerator magnet community."
LARP is a collaboration of Brookhaven National Laboratory, Fermilab, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory founded by DOE in 2003 to address the challenge of planned upgrades that will significantly increase the LHC's luminosity.
Read more
-- Paul Preuss
|
Food, magic and funny physicists at potluck party
Fermilab's Inaugural potluck party begins tonight at 5 p.m.
Enjoy food from around the world, singing by Fermilab's Daycare children and comedy skits from some of Fermilab's funniest physicists.
From 5 to 6:15 p.m., Fermilab employees, retired employees, users, contractors, funding agency employees and their families and friends will gather in the Wilson Hall atrium to enjoy a wide variety of cultural cuisine.
At 5:30 p.m., children from the Fermilab Daycare will sing Christmas songs in the Fermilab atrium.
From 6:30-8:30 p.m., the evening's entertainment will take place in Ramsey Auditorium. Rocky Kolb will emcee the event, which will include skits, songs and more. View the program and find out more at the party Web site.
|
This week at the LHC
The LHC had a successful weekend, with the experiments recording a total of 50,000 collisions at 2.36 TeV, the LHC's maximum energy for 2009. Collectively, the six LHC experiments saw over one million collision events at 900 GeV, which also provided enough data to characterize the accelerator. Last night, the LHC circulated the highest intensity beams yet, with 16 particle bunches per beam. Each bunch contained approximately 20 billion particles.
The weekend's collision events are an exciting confirmation of the machine's abilities, but there is still a long way to go. This year's LHC run ends this week. The LHC will restart in the first quarter of 2010, following maintenance and hardware preparation for the next milestone, collisions at an energy of 7 TeV (3.5 TeV per beam).
Read more
|
|
|
Short visit to Perú
|
Fermilab Director Pier Oddone with distinguished Peruvian scientists Modesto Montoya and Victor La Torre after Oddone received an honorary degree from Universidad Ricardo Palma. |
During the last two weeks I visited Perú for the first time in more than 20 years. I found a country much changed and developing quickly. I grew up in Perú and left in 1960 to study in the US at a time when it would have been nearly impossible to study physics in Perú. While Perú has a long way to go in physics, the drive to understand and promote science generally is there, thanks to the heroic effort of a few devoted academics over the last decades. In high energy physics both the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Peru (PUCP) and the Universidad Nacional de Ingeniería (UNI) have groups working at Fermilab in the Minerva collaboration. My visit was an opportunity for building new relations and promoting the importance of science and technology.
While in Perú I received a doctoral degree honoris causa from the Universidad Ricardo Palma, received a medal as the Embajador Científico y Tecnológico del Peru 2010 from the Red Internacional de Ciencia y Tecnología, was made a foreign member of the Academia Nacional de Ciencias, was member of the jury for the master's degree of Kenyi Hurtado, a Minerva graduate student at the Universidad de Ingeniería and participated in several interviews including one on a popular radio and television program talking about "el bosón de Higgs," particle physics and the importance of research on fundamental science. The folks who promoted all these honors and organized my visit also had in mind reaching young people with a living example of the possibilities and excitement of a scientific career. We live in a special time when the interest in physics across the world is piqued by the turn-on of LHC and the potential to answer many mysteries that confront us.
I was struck by Perú's rapid development over the last couple of decades. Lima has extended greatly both in area and height, with many high rise buildings replacing houses in residential areas throughout Lima. The economic crisis seems much attenuated, with a strong informal economy and a booming internal market. It is early enough in the development of the country to channel technologies, especially energy technologies, in the right direction. Perú starts in a good position with 60 percent of its electrical energy generated by hydroelectric power. I had the honor to meet Ing. Pedro Sanchez, the Secretary of Energy and Mines, who expressed his interest in collaborating with DOE in setting up an institute for energy efficiency in Peru. The opportunity for collaboration with DOE labs and US universities across a broad scientific field could be very fruitful.
|
ES&H weekly report, Dec. 15
This week's safety report, compiled by the Fermilab ES&H section, includes four non-recordable injuries, including one involving reaching into a stuck drawer. We have now worked 54 days since the last recordable injury. Find the full report here.
Safety report archive
|
|