Fermilab constructs pioneering accelerator test facility

The construction includes three interconnected structures, which will house the test accelerator, a test area for cryomodules and the equipment for a powerful new refrigerator.

Officials at the Department of Energy's Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory announced today that the laboratory has started phase II of the construction of a pioneering facility to advance a technology that will be critical to the next generation of particle accelerators.

The new facility, which will occupy three buildings and host a 460-foot-long test accelerator, will be the first of its kind in the United States.

Fermilab is using $52.7 million in funding from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to advance its Superconducting Radio-Frequency R&D program, which includes the construction of the SRF Accelerator Test Facility. Phase I of the construction began in March 2010 with the $2.8 million expansion of an existing building. For phase II, the laboratory has awarded a $4.2 million contract for the construction of two new buildings. Additional ARRA funds will go toward equipment and infrastructure needed for the building's operation. Fermilab will use the facility to test superconducting radio-frequency components and validate the manufacturing capability of vendors from U.S. industry.

"Our future is going to involve accelerators that use superconducting radio-frequency technology," said Jay Theilacker of Fermilab's Accelerator Division. "Building this new SRF test facility is an important step forward."

Structures called SRF cavities accelerate charged particles to very high energies. The structures operate inside containers known as cryomodules, which chill the cavities to -456 degrees Fahrenheit, a temperature where they can conduct electric current without electrical resistance-hence the term "superconducting."

Fermilab plans to use the facility to test cryomodules designed for two proposed future particle accelerators: Project X, which would be built at Fermilab, and the International Linear Collider, which could become the world's next high-energy collider, designed and built through an international effort. The laboratory's current flagship accelerator, the Tevatron, is scheduled to retire after 2011. It does not use SRF technology.

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Does the universe have a 'dark flow?'

From NPR's Talk of the Nation, Sept. 17, 2010

Using measurements of the cosmic microwave background, researchers say, there's evidence that galaxy clusters are being pulled along by a force outside the visible universe. Theoretical physicist Michael Turner explains this "dark flow" and other recent cosmology news.

IRA FLATOW, host:

Up next, some spooky physics news. You've heard about dark matter and dark energy? How about dark flow?

Scientists studying the cosmic microwave background - that's the radiation leftover from the Big Bang - say they've detected something strange happening couple of billion light years from here.

Some mysterious, unseen force, they say, is pulling galaxy clusters through the universe, and these galaxies are traveling, well, they're clocking along at about a million miles per hour and moving in the way that our current understanding of the universe does not predict, they say.

Scientists have dubbed that movement dark flow because we don't know what's going on there. Here to tell us more about it and other news that is causing cosmologists to lay awake at night is my guest, Michael Turner, director of the Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics, professor of physics at the University of Chicago. Welcome back to SCIENCE FRIDAY. It's always good to have you.

Read the transcript or listen to the broadcast