Tuesday, June 28, 2011
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Have a safe day!

Tuesday, June 28
Noon
Summer Lecture Series - One West
Speaker: Deborah Harris, Fermilab
Title: Neutrino Physics
3:30 p.m.
DIRECTOR'S COFFEE BREAK - 2nd Flr X-Over
THERE WILL BE NO ACCELERATOR PHYSICS AND TECHNOLOGY SEMINAR TODAY

Wednesday, June 29
11:30 p.m.
Computing Techniques Seminar - Curia II
Speaker: Asher Haig, Emory University
Title: Exploring Programmatic Structure
3:30 p.m.
DIRECTOR'S COFFEE BREAK - 2nd Flr X-Over
THERE WILL BE NO FERMILAB COLLOQUIUM THIS WEEK

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Wilson Hall Cafe

Tuesday, June 28

- Breakfast: Bagel sandwich
- Chicken & rice soup
- Italian sausage w/ peppers & onions
- Beef stroganoff
- Chicken tetrazzini
- Peppered beef
- Assorted sliced pizza
- Chicken tostadas

Wilson Hall Cafe Menu

Chez Leon

Wednesday, June 29
- Szechuan spicy pork & noodle salad
- Carrot cucumber relish
- Lemon cheesecake w/ gingersnap crust

Chez Leon Menu
Call x3524 to make your reservation.

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Special Announcement

Get your DASTOW photo today

Group photos from this year’s DASTOW event, which took place on Wednesday, June 23, are now available on the security desk in the atrium of Wilson Hall. Please pick up your photo today. Photos: Cindy Arnold & Reidar Hahn
From SLAC Today

LSST camera passes first funding milestone

Once constructed, the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope's 3.2-billion-pixel camera will be the largest digital camera in the world. Roughly the size of a small car, the camera will take 800 panoramic images each night, surveying the entire southern sky twice a week. Image courtesy the LSST Collaboration.

On Monday, the Department of Energy approved a key milestone in the SLAC-led development of a camera for the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope. It formally establishes the need for such a project as part of the agency’s mission, designates a stream of funding for it, and names the LSST as the first option for meeting that mission need.

The approval, known as Critical Decision Zero or CD-0, clears the way for work to continue on the 3.2- billion-pixel camera, which will be the world's largest digital camera when complete. The camera will capture images from the giant survey telescope that, if all goes according to plan, will kick off the 2020s by mapping the distribution of mass in the universe. Scientists hope the data will reveal fundamental properties of dark matter and dark energy. The US astronomy community selected the LSST as its top priority ground-based project in the two-year process known as Astro2010, the Astronomy and Astrophysics Decadal Survey.

"CD-0 formally starts the project at the DOE," said SLAC and KIPAC cosmologist Steve Kahn, who directs the camera development effort. "For the past seven years we have been operating in an uncertain environment, so this is indeed a major breakthrough for us."

Read more

Glennda Chui

Feature

Stay safe this Fourth of July

Stay safe while enjoying the Fourth of July holiday.

Participating in the festivities of the Fourth of July is an exciting time for all of us, but BBQs and fireworks can present dangers to ruin the day. By following a few precautions you can make sure that your friends and family stay safe.

Follow these tips when using fireworks:

  • Attend public fireworks displays. The safest way to enjoy fireworks is by watching displays conducted by community-hired professional pyrotechnicians.
  • Children should always be supervised by an adult. Sparklers can reach 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit (982 degrees Celsius) — hot enough to melt gold.
  • Keep a safe distance from others — fireworks have been known to backfire or shoot off in the wrong direction. Never throw or point fireworks at someone, even in jest.
  • Always have a bucket of water handy.
  • Don't try to relight or “fix” firework launching displays while fireworks are lit.
  • Don’t allow kids to pick up pieces of fireworks after an event. Some may still be ignited and can explode at any time.
  • Think about your pet. Animals have sensitive ears and can be extremely frightened or stressed on the Fourth of July. Keep pets indoors to reduce the risk that they'll run loose or get injured.

Prevent unwanted BBQ fires by following these precautions:

  • Place a grill away from structures and areas of dry wood or grass.
  • Never leave a lit grill unattended.
  • Keep children and pets away from grills.
  • Never apply lighter fluid to a lit grill.
  • Don’t wear loose fitting clothing when grilling.
  • Discard used coals in a safe container and only after they have thoroughly cooled.

Have a happy and safe Fourth of July.

— Fermilab Fire Department

In the News

Underground physics lab to cost U.S. energy department at least $1.2 billion

From Science Insider, June 23, 2011

ROCKVILLE, MARYLAND— Physics fans, hold your breath: An underground lab that's absolutely vital to the future of particle physics in the United States will cost the Department of Energy (DOE) between $1.2 billion and $2.2 billion, according to a study presented today to the federal High Energy Physics Advisory Panel (HEPAP). Those numbers are not entirely surprising, as they essentially combine the money DOE would have spent on an experiment in the lab with a proposal that the National Science Foundation (NSF) spend $875 million to build the lab. But they will put a mighty strain on DOE's $795 million a year particle-physics budget and could significantly slow down another key project at the United States's only lab solely dedicated to particle physics. The report also dashes the dreams of some physicists to place some exquisitely sensitive experiments in the mine's lowest level, 2500 meters down.

Until recently, scientists had been hoping that NSF would convert the Homestake mine in the Black Hills of South Dakota into a Deep Underground Science and Engineering Laboratory (DUSEL). That facility would have housed a suite of big particle physics experiments, as well as smaller-scale research in geology, microbiology, and engineering. However, in December, the National Science Board, which sets policy for NSF, declined to continue development of the $875 million laboratory, objecting to a proposal that NSF spend $480 million on laboratory infrastructure and share other costs with DOE, which would build the biggest experiment to go into DUSEL. That decision left the project's fate in the hands of DOE, the primary support of particle physics in the United States.

Read more

Director's Corner

Options for the Homestake site

Fermilab Director Pier Oddone

After last year's decision by the National Science Board to deny further NSF funding for DUSEL, the DOE Office of Science convened a committee led by Jay Marx and Mark Reichanadter to evaluate the Office of Science's options for underground science. The findings of the committee were presented last Thursday to the High Energy Physics Advisory Panel.

The charge to the committee was to assess options for the development of the Homestake site and to present costs associated with various options. The site could be used for the Long Base Line Neutrino Experiment (LBNE), direct dark matter searches and neutrino-less double beta-decay experiments. Although the charge to the committee did not include making a specific recommendation on how to proceed, the committee summarized its conclusions as follows:

  • The committee believes there are compelling scientific motivations for all three experiments and an important opportunity for the U.S. to take a leadership position for the foreseeable future.
  • There are important advantages and opportunities in developing a common site for these experiments if the needed infrastructure can be shared in a cost effective manner.

The Homestake site would provide such an opportunity by using LBNE at the depth of 4,850 feet to develop the infrastructure needed for underground access. The additions necessary for dark matter and double beta decay experiments would then become feasible and economic, especially considering that all three programs are long term and will evolve over two to three decades.

A very significant fraction of the Homestake project can be accomplished by re-directing resources currently allocated to particle physics, but some additional funding will be necessary to develop LBNE and the Homestake site. The particle physics community has been disciplined in shutting down facilities that have reached the end of their scientific life, including the B-factory collider at SLAC, AGS at Brookhaven, Cornell's NSF-funded CESR collider, and Fermilab's Tevatron. Essentially flat funding over the last 15 years has also resulted in the erosion of some $150 million per year of purchasing power from our field. Restoration of some of that loss will be necessary to fund the development of the Homestake site without major damage to other critical projects.

Read more

Photo of the Day

Sunset over Main Ring Lake

PPD's Terry Tope captured this colorful display of the sun setting over Main Ring Lake and Wilson Hall from DZero on June 17.
In the News

When matter melts

From LBNL News Center, June 23, 2011

In its infancy, when the universe was a few millionths of a second old, the elemental constituents of matter moved freely in a hot, dense soup of quarks and gluons. As the universe expanded, this quark–gluon plasma quickly cooled, and protons and neutrons and other forms of normal matter “froze out”: the quarks became bound together by the exchange of gluons, the carriers of the color force.

“The theory that describes the color force is called quantum chromodynamics, or QCD,” says Nu Xu of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), the spokesperson for the STAR experiment at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at DOE’s Brookhaven National Laboratory. “QCD has been extremely successful at explaining interactions of quarks and gluons at short distances, such as high-energy proton and antiproton collisions at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. But in bulk collections of matter – including the quark-gluon plasma – at longer distances or smaller momentum transfer, an approach called lattice gauge theory has to be used.”

Read more

Accelerator Update

June 24-27

- Four stores provided ~ 59.07 hours of luminosity
- Pbar vault exhaust fan repaired
- Store 8836 aborted due to Tevatron LCW problem
- MTA took beam
- I- Source tripped off due to water resister water skid trip
- Linac off due to LRF3 & 4 power amplifier troubles
- RF personnel repair BRF12
- Tevatron abort due to heater firing unit failure
- Linac off due to door interlock fault, followed by Linac safety system testing

Read the Current Accelerator Update
Read the Early Bird Report
View the Tevatron Luminosity Charts

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Argentine Tango at Fermilab each Wednesday, Ramsey Auditorium

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