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Fermilab — Excursions Into Matter, Space and Time
An anonymous reader writes "Fermilab is one of the great physics research facilities in the U.S. It is mainly known for its Tevatron proton/anti-proton accelerator to help physicists understand how materials interact with each other. TG Daily has a extensive article detailing Fermilab's accelerator chain and the work that is being done there. It's an interesting read, especially since many of us won't have a chance to visit Fermilab and the fact that the Tevatron accelerator is scheduled to be shut down next year."
All we have to know about mater-space-time is in the series documental Star-Trek.
One thing that the article leaves out, unfortunately, is another unique property of Fermilab - that it owns a herd of American Bison. Having "signature" animals at National Labs isn't unique to Fermi - for example, Argonne National Labs, also in Illinois, has a large population of the cream-colored Dama Dama "White Deer." However, while Argonne merely allows the deer to roam freely on its land, Fermilab Bison are actively cultivated by the lab, creating some really fine breeding studs, and acting as a sustainable way of preserving one aspect of the natural "Prairie" that is part of North American history.
The bison are indeed mentioned in the article.
Some things it doesn't mention though, that I recall from my brief summer there 20+ years back:
* the radioactive groundhogs. Every national lab I've been to seemed to have a colony of groundhogs, I guess they like the security.... At Fermilab, there was a burrow in the middle of a mile-long berm of dirt that acted as a beam dump to generate neutrinos (only neutrinos make it through that much matter without being stopped).
* Wilson's artworks - I assume they're still around. Robert Wilson was the instigator of the lab, and got it built on time and under budget. He was also a bit of a sculptor, and a number of his artworks were on the grounds around the administration building. In fact I think he designed the rather unique admin building too.
* the annual "race around the ring" - actually, maybe that's gone away since Leon Lederman's no longer the lab director. It was quite a challenge when I was there though; you can imagine a bunch of desk physicists and engineers trying to make it around the 3+ miles of the ring road in a reasonable amount of time...
Energy: time to change the picture.
The company I work for is involved with the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in England just outside of Abingdon. They also have a synchotron facility and gave us a demonstration on how they accelerate particles within a beam by bending it with magnets to form a giant ring (I think the one in RAL is about 3 miles in circumference). They use very complex sensors to study the "scattering" of particles colliding with various materials to determine various characteristics and properties.
It was a very neat and interesting presentation... Unfortunately, having some of the finer details explained by scientists who live and breath the stuff put it just ever so slightly above my level of understanding (I was lost in the first 30 seconds)... At one point, I could've sworn they just broke out some random Star Trek technobabble just to get a laugh out of me later =P.
I agree with the author, the article is indeed a very interesting read. And yes, while Tevatron is shutting down, US still leads the world in similar facilities, including one not too far from Fermilab at Argonne.
Capitalism: When it uses the carrot, it's called democracy. When it uses the stick, it's called fascism.
"A random blogger regurgitates PR stuff, drools over PR stuff, and can't be bothered to Google, spellcheck, or edit his writings". Would be an apt description of TFA.
I long for the day when Slashdot linked to substantial material, rather than fanboi crap.