Feb 2012 Symmetry Magazine

symmetry
A joint Fermilab/SLAC publication
dimensions of particle physics
volume 9
issue 1
february 2012
volume 9 | issue 1 | february 2012
symmetry
A joint Fermilab/SLAC publication
On the cover If theres one thing we think we know about physics, its the universal speed limitthe 186,000-mile-per-second limit for the speed of light established by Albert Einstein. When members of the OPERA neutrino experiment announced in September that they may have clocked neutrinos going faster than light, all hell broke loose. First came incredulous headlines. Then came the jokes. See Do you know why I pulled you over? on page 10. Photos: Reidar Hahn
10 Do You Know Why I Pulled You Over? Exceeding the speed limit has consequences, even especially?for neutrinos. 16 Going Public How the public release of data from the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescopes main instrument has affected the hundreds of researchers who use itand resulted in more and better science. 22 Taking the Heat out of Nuclear Waste Particle accelerators have the potential to address critical issues for the future of nuclear energy. 28 The Tevatrons Proud Legacy Fermilabs game-changing accelerator revolutionized the world of particle physics research. 36 Gallery: Kate Findlay The Large Hadron Collider, a steely pinnacle of physics and engineering, doesnt generally bring soft, snuggly thoughts to mind. But that may change for people who see Kate Findlays quilts. 40 Accelerator Apps: Radioisotopes Tens of millions of patients each year are diagnosed and treated using accelerator-based radioisotopes, and more than 300 cyclotrons across the United States produce short-lived isotopes for hospitals. C3 Logbook: W Mass Precision Measurement In January 2007, Ashutosh Kotwal presented the most precise measurement of the mass of the W boson to date, demonstrating that hadron colliders, such as the Fermilab Tevatron, were capable of extremely precise measurements. The new value suggested that the Higgs boson would be lighter than previously thought. C4 Explain it in 60 Seconds: Cosmic Microwave Background The cosmic microwave background is the oldest light in the universe. It was set free when the universe was a mere 380,000 years old and provides a window to the early universe.
02 Editorial: Moose and the Higgs Boson As with the Higgs, signs and portents of moose are everywhere hereabouts, and motorists are well warned of the spots where they can expect to detect them. Higgslike, the moose are surely out there, but Higgslike they remained unseen, at least by the symmetry editor, until one snowy Vermont twilight. 03 Commentary: Jim Siegrist With the outlook for federal spending on science uncertain and no particle collider operating on US soil for the first time in decades, Congress has asked the Department of Energy to deliver strategic plans for advanced accelerator R&D and particle physics with intense beams. 04 Signal to Background Earths inner secrets revealed; bulldogs and physics collide; the Mona Lisas heavy metal connection; citizen cyberscience opens up the scientific process to amateurs; BaBarian wins dark matter contest; a Nobelist puts her stamp on physics; letters. 08 symmetrybreaking A summary of recent stories published online in symmetry breaking, www.symmetrymagazine.org/blog/february2012
Moose and the Higgs boson

In the snowy twilight of an early winter evening I was driving south on Vermont Route 14 when two moose emerged from the woods and crossed the road a few yards in front of my car. Immediately, I thought of the Higgs boson. As with the Higgs, signs and portents of moose are everywhere hereabouts. Decades of moose hunting have established their most likely habitat, and motorists are well warned of the spots where they can expect to detect them. Higgslike, the moose are surely out there, but Higgslike they remained unseen, at least by me. Suddenly, they appeared in my headlights, two huge, dark shapes, with their improbably majestic antlers and long, long legs, ambling across the road. Unlike the art of Higgs detection, automotive moose detection is very often fatal for the detector, although rarely for the moose. Fortunately, I had been driving slowly on the snowy road, so I had time to stop. Heart pounding, I watched the enormous animals cross the road and disappear into the woods on the other side. Well, now Ive seen them. Moose exist. And like the Higgs, or so I thought in the twilight, these magnificent creatures are deeply, primally connected to the beauty and mystery of nature. There was no one behind me on the highway, so I waited a minute or two, thinking these thoughts, before I drove on. And turned on the car radio, where an interview was in progress with a young innovator, a science
Symmetry PO Box 500 MS 206 Batavia Illinois 60510 USA 630 840 3351 telephone 630 840 8780 fax mail@symmetrymagazine.org For subscription services go to www.symmetrymagazine.org symmetry (ISSN 1931-8367) is published by Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory and SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, funded by the US Department of Energy Office of Science. (c) 2012 symmetry All rights reserved Editor-in-Chief Judy Jackson 802 754 9968 Deputy Editor Glennda Chui Managing Editor Kurt Riesselmann Senior Editor Tona Kunz Staff Writers Elizabeth Clements Rhianna Wisniewski Lori Ann White Interns Christine Herman Brad Hooker Amy Dusto
whiz and musician, who at the age of 17 had already made a contribution to science and technology. While practicing the piano, the Pennsylvania high-school student noticed that certain chords caused the strings of a banjo hanging on the wall to resonate. Inspired by that observation, she developed an acoustic detector for hidden land mines. To wrap up the interview, the host asked this remarkable young woman about her plans and ambitions. Im not exactly sure what I want to do with my life, she said, but Ive told people before that my dream is to do particle physics and work at CERN in Switzerland, but definitely I want to do something in science. A thrill: talented, idealistic young Americans still dream of doing particle physics. A pang: they must dream of doing it far from their own country. Not that theres anything wrong with CERN or Switzerland, although they do not, I believe, have moose. Perhaps this is the year the Higgs boson will turn up in the headlights. And may dream-worthy particle physics flourish anew here at home! Meanwhile, drive carefully and watch out for moose. Judy Jackson, Editor-in-Chief
Publishers Katie Yurkewicz, FNAL Farnaz Khadem, SLAC Contributing Editors Roberta Antolini, LNGS Romeo Bassoli, INFN Kandice Carter, JLab Lynn Yarris, LBNL James Gillies, CERN Silvia Giromini, LNF Youhei Morita, KEK Tim Meyer, TRIUMF Perrine Royole-Degieux, IN2P3 Yuri Ryabov, IHEP Protvino Yves Sacquin, CEA-Saclay Kendra Snyder, BNL Boris Starchenko, JINR Maury Tigner, LEPP Ute Wilhelmsen, DESY Tongzhou Xu, IHEP Beijing Vanessa Mexner, NIKHEF Print Design and Production Sandbox Studio Chicago, Illinois Art Director Michael Branigan Designers/Illustrators Kimberly Boustead Aaron Grant Web Design and Production Xeno Media Oakbrook Terrace, Illinois Web Architect Kevin Munday Web Design Karen Acklin Alex Tarasiewicz Web Programmer Mike Acklin Photographic Services Fermilab Visual Media Services
Photo: Peter Limon
from the editor
symmetry
2
symmetry | volume 9 | issue 1 | february 2012
commentary: jim siegrist

the energy, intensity, and cosmic frontiers of particle physics. The 2008 report of the Particle Physics Project Prioritization Panel planted the seeds of a future national program with high-intensity particle beams, but the physics community did not subsequently explore the full scope of a US intensityfrontier program. We have begun this process with a DOE-hosted workshop and are now in the process of translating the communitys consensus on scientific opportunities and required facilities into a long-term strategy. The past few years have seen an increasing focus in Washington on research that has immediate impact on problems of great national importance. Our basic research program is valued by decision makers of all political stripes, but theres no denying that broader support is possible when we can articulate the impact of our research on society. The Office of High Energy Physics is working closely with the broader scientific communitynuclear physics, light source communities, computing science to create and implement a strategy that will transform breakthroughs in accelerator R&D to advances that benefit both science and society in the short and long term. A strong future for particle physics in the United States will require hard work on the part of everyone involved with our field. Our community of particle physicists will need to come together to achieve consensus on the direction our country should take at the Intensity Frontier. The accelerator science community will need to form partnerships with other fields and industries to transform our innovative ideas to the benefit of society. And my colleagues and I in the Office of High Energy Physics will work within available budgets to implement the best possible scientific program for our nation and the world.
Jim Siegrist is the director of the Office of High Energy Physics in the Department of Energys Office of Science.
Photo: Berkeley Lab
Forging ahead toward the frontiers

Its a challenging time for particle physics in the United States. The outlook for federal spending for physics researchindeed for all of science is uncertain. For the first time in decades, there is no particle collider operating or under construction on US soil. In the midst of fierce international competition in neutrino physics, the future of the Long-Baseline Neutrino Experiment remains unclear. And in the midst of this time of uncertainty I stepped into the role of director for the Department of Energys Office of High Energy Physics. You might wonder: why? I took the job because I believe that a strong US particle physics research program is vitally important for the nation, and for the world. This program must be diverse in order to best position our community to make the next major discoveries and to follow where they lead. It must keep the US a leader in the field, to keep the balance between the major world regions and ensure a steady flow of new talent and ideas to US physics institutions. It must restore a healthy balance between funding for R&D, construction, and operations, so we can be ready to build and exploit the facilities necessary to take advantage of new discoveries. The US was the birthplace of particle accelerators and today boasts the largest single community of particle and accelerator physicists in the world. Congress, recognizing the importance of particle physics and accelerator science to our country, directed DOE in its 2012 budget to deliver within nine months two strategic plans: one for particle physics with intense beams and a second for advanced accelerator R&D. My colleagues and I in the Office of High Energy Physics have a busy year ahead, working with the US physics community to devise long-term strategies for those two areas while ensuring a balanced portfolio of research at
3
signal to background
Earths inner secrets revealed; bulldogs and physics collide; the Mona Lisas heavy metal connection; citizen cyberscience opens up the scientific process to amateurs; BaBarian wins dark matter contest; a Nobelist puts her stamp on physics; letters.
Journey to the center of the Earth

Using an antineutrino detector based in Japan, researchers can tell what makes the Earths interior hot and better understand the planets workings. Scientists designed KamLAND to detect and study antineutrinos produced in Japanese nuclear reactors. But they knew it could also measure antineutrinos produced by natural geological processes in the Earth, says Stuart
But the geoneutrinos Freedman of Lawrence detected so far are assumed to Berkeley National Laboratory, come from the Earths crust and who leads US participation in mantle, not the core, and perKamLAND. By studying these haps only from the upper mantle. geoneutrinos, he says, we Its not clear we have much of tried to change what can be any sampling from deeper, says said about geology. geophysicist Raymond Jeanloz Radioactive isotopes in the of the University of California at Earths interior release geoneutrinos, producing heat. KamLAND Berkeley. It would be very useful to get constraints on radioactive reported the first evidence for geoneutrinos in 2005 and fol- heat production in the core as well. For one thing, this would lowed up with a better measurement in 2011. These results inform us about the energy sources that generate the geoindicate that about half of Earths heat comes from radio- magnetic field. To get those deeper meaactive decays, an estimate based on accepted geophysi- surements, scientists need to pinpoint the directions the cal models. geoneutrinos come froma Heat from Earths interior not only drives the spreading of much debated proposition. That will require many more the ocean floors and the antineutrino detectors around movement of the continents, the globe in locations such as its also indirectly responsible for the magnetic field that pro- the middle of the oceans, where Earths crust is thinnest. tects the Earths surface from cosmic rays and ozone-depleting Paul Preuss particles from the sun.
4
Image courtesy of KamLAND
Photo courtesy of KamLAND
Bulldoggish on science
West of Chicago, the town of Batavia, Ill., has long been dominated by two images: Fermilab and the local high school mascot, the bulldog. So when artists were asked to decorate bulldog statues placed throughout town as part of a community-building event, Dana Parisi immediately thought of combining the two. Fermilabs so awesome and amazing, she said. Her piece, titled Fermi-Lap Dog, won Best in Show, and its sale, along with those of the other statues, generated money for local charities. Modeled after the 1998 CowParade art show in Zurich, Switzerland, the Bulldog Unleashed event highlighted a variety of artistic styles and community themes. Spectator votes determined the winner. The Fermi-Lap Dogs back sported a birds-eye view of the accelerator complex, surrounded by exploding particles and the iconic Wilson Hall, named for the laboratorys first director. From the dogs belly rose clouds in shades of neon orange and greena colorful galaxy expanding into the dark universe. Its a very kid-friendly design. My daughter loved it, said Bulldog Unleashed project
X-rays reveal poison in Mona Lisa model

Scientists had already deconstructed Mona Lisas smile. Now, with intense beams of X-rays, they have analyzed her hair. Isabella (14701524) of Aragon, princess of Naples and duchess of Milan, is thought by some to be the woman in the famous portrait by Leonardo da Vinci. Behind the closed lips of that enigmatic smile she had blackened teeth, indicating mercury exposure. Did the toxic element do her in? At Brookhaven National Laboratorys National Synchrotron Light Source, scientists aimed narrow beams of X-rays at strands of Isabellas hair. Hair grows about 16 centimeters per year; they were able to zoom in on sections representing just 15 minutes of growth. Their studies revealed that within 20 days of her death, Isabellas hair contained elevated levels of mercury ranging from 10 to 50 parts per million. The World Health Organization
5
Image: Brookhaven National Laboratory symmetry | volume 9 | issue 1 | february 2012
spokesperson Nell Novak, adding that the Lap Dogs location may have given it a leg up, so to speak, in the voting: Being near the popcorn stand might have helped. Brad Hooker
deems 50 ppm of mercury in hair toxic, and recommends a limit of 5 ppm for the general public. Researchers also tested Isabellas bone for common diseases of the time. Her bone tested positive for visceral leishmaniasis, the most severe form of a parasitic disease that can cause skin ulcers in immunesuppressed patients and fatal damage to vital organs. Mercury was considered a cure-all for skin diseases in medieval times, and doctors likely used it to treat Isabellas leishmaniasis-related skin lesions. Because mercury poisoning can suppress the immune system, the tale of Isabellas demise could very well be this: mercury intoxication, leading to a weakened immune system, clearing the way for a deadly infection. The study was done by scientists from the University of Chicago, University of Turin, University of Pisa, University of New Mexico, Academic Teaching Hospital MnchenBogenhausen, and the New Mexico Health Enhancement and Marathon Clinics Research Foundation. Kendra Snyder
Photo: Reidar Hahn
Scientists at Brookhavens National Synchrotron Light Source used a beam of X-rays just five microns in diameterthe size of the red dot to analyze sections of hair representing just 15 minutes of growth.
signal to background
at CERN, is a pioneer of citizen cyberscience. In 2004, Grey launched LHC@home; and in 2009 he helped establish a Citizen Cyberscience Center in Geneva. The center, which hosts a variety of scientific and humanitarian projects, is an international partnership among CERN, the UN Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) and the University of Geneva. Grey describes citizen cyberscience as social networking with a purpose: to enable ordinary citizens to participate in real science via the worldwide Web. He draws a distinction between open science, focused on the free flow of scientific information primarily among scientists, and citizen cyberscience, which makes the scientific process itself available to amateurs outside the scientific community. This second sort of openness, Grey says in a post on his Billion Brain Blog, opens up science in a potentially far more radical way. It puts into question the very notion of a boundary between professional and amateur science. He adds, The overriding argument for citizen cyberscience is its ability to share the wonder of scientific discovery more widely, as something people with an interest in the world around them can partake in. It can, he argues, ignite a passion for science that too often falls victim to boring science teachers and dumbeddown popular science works, a passion that scientific experts, fenced in behind their technical jargon, often fail to kindle amongst the wider public. Citizen cyberscientists will come together in their second Citizen Cyberscience Summit (say that three times fast) in London in mid-February. Meanwhile, all would-be cyberscientists are welcome to join the CCC. Project information can be found at www.citizencyberscience.net Judith Jackson
Science for all and all for science.

Citizen Cyberscience Center motto Recently members of a group playing an online game called Foldit were able to solve a 15-year-old problemdetermining the complex structure of an HIV proteinin just two weeks. This was made possible through citizen cyberscience, which connects the human brainpower and intuition of thousands of nonscientist volunteers around the world to a scientific grid of computing power. Their discovery could speed the process of drug development and medical studies of this deadly virus. CERN scientists have done something similar. Theyve simulated more than 500 billion particle collisions thanks to hundreds of volunteers in the program LHC@home, which allows people to lend spare processing capacity from their home computers to physicists. Physicist Francois Grey, who spent six years managing IT
A brainy look at dark matter

Have you ever sat in an open field at night, looked up at the vast number of stars and thought, I bet an artificial brain would come in handy for making sense of all this? You might if you were planning the best way for NASA to map the sky. University of California, Irvine professor David Kirkby and his doctoral student Daniel Margala tapped an analytical technique from particle physics to win a contest to help NASAs Euclid mission map galaxy clusters. The technique? An artificial neural network like the ones Kirkby used in his work on the BaBar experiment at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. Its just one of many connections he has been finding between his past collider work and current astrophysics projects, including the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope and BOSS, the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey, which is mapping galaxies and
letters
Dont forget the University of Minnesota
I was pleased to read the article about the construction of the NOA neutrino experiment in Minnesota (Oct. 2011 issue). Its nice, but it lacks a certain perspective. The article mentions that NOA is a collaboration of 28 institutions; none but Fermilab and Indiana University are mentioned. In particular, the University of Minnesota took great responsibility for the construction of the laboratory that will house the experiment, and it now plays a major role in the construction of the detector. These construction projects are based on a collaborative agreement between the Department of Energy and the University of Minnesota with significant technical and management support from Fermilab. Mark Messier, Indiana University
6
Images courtesy of David Kirkby
galaxy
without noise
without pixelation
without atmosphere
star Galaxy shape reconstruction algorithm. From left to right: the original image including atmospheric distortion and noise fluctuations, reconstruction of the image with noise removed, and reconstruction with atmospheric effects and pixelation removed.
quasars to get a better handle on the expansion of the universe. Where once he sought answers to natures fundamental questions in the debris from particle collisions, Now Im tackling the same questions using telescopes, Kirkby says. For someone breaking into a new field, he adds, the contest offered an ideal opportunity. In creating the contest, NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the United Kingdoms Royal Astronomical Society teamed up with Kaggle, a company that hosts competitions to solve statistical and analytical problems. JPL needed an innovative system for mapping dark matter in upcoming missions such as the Euclid telescope survey, which will map the large-scale structure of the universe by imaging an unprecedented number of faint galaxies whose shapes are subtly distorted by the presence of dark matter. One of the grand challenges in cosmology is to analyze these distortions precisely enough to unravel the interplay between dark matter and dark energy, the mysterious force that is thought to fuel the accelerated expansion of the universe. Kaggle provided contestants with 100,000 images that were intentionally blurred and contained various amounts of noise. Kirkby searched his particle physics background for approaches he could use. He and Margala submitted a total of 16 data sets, gradually improving their score and beating out the other 72 teams. The prize? A trip to JPL
to present their results. But the ultimate reward may come in 2019, when Euclid is scheduled to launch. Brad Hooker
A stamp of her own

Maria Goeppert Mayer left an indelible stamp on the history of physics. Now the US Postal Service has honored the nuclear physicist with a stamp of her own. Goeppert Mayer was the second woman to win the Nobel Prize in Physics and only the fourth to win a Nobel in any scientific field. In 1946, while splitting her time between Argonne National Laboratory and what is now the University of Chicagos Enrico Fermi Institute, she became interested in the mystery of magic numbers: Atomic nuclei that contain certain numbers of neutrons or protons are more stable than others, but no one knew why. Physicists had already theorized that electrons orbit the nucleus in layers, or shells,
Photo: US Postal Service
based on their energies. Goeppert Mayer set about proving that protons and neutrons, collectively known as nucleons, also occupy shells within the nucleus. Much as the Earth spins on its axis while orbiting the sun, nucleons spin on their axes while moving in a larger orbit. Magic numbers result when a particular shell is full of nucleons. With a full shell, the atom is less likely to interact and is thus more stable. For the discovery of the nuclear shell model and spinorbit coupling, which allowed scientists to explain previously baffling observations about the atom, Goeppert Mayer shared half the Nobel Prize in Physics with J. Hans D. Jensen in 1963. Her first-class postage stamp is part of a series called American Scientists that can be purchased online. You can find out more about her work at the Contributions of 20th Century Women to Physics website, http://cwp. library.ucla.edu. Louise Lerner
symmetrybreaking Highlights from our blog

J-PARC back in running after earthquake
January 5, 2012
Fermilab to build Illinois Accelerator Research Center

December 16, 2011
Digital artist wins CERN competition

December 6, 2011
Ten months after the earthquake and tsunami that devastated northern Japan, the Japan Proton Accelerator Research Complex (J-PARC) completed the first full test run for its system, which had been heavily damaged.
A new accelerator research facility being built at Fermilab will provide a state-of-the-art facility for research, development and industrialization of particle accelerator technology.
Former gold mine readies for experiments

December 15, 2011
German artist Julius von Bismarck, 28, will spend three months collaborating with scientists and digital experts to create a physics-inspired artwork after winning the CERN /Ars Electronica digital arts competition.
People, ideas pack Intensity Frontier Workshop

December 5, 2011
LHC discovers its first particle

January 3, 2012
Hints of the Higgs remain in analyses

December 13, 2011 CERNs Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland discovered its first new particle shortly before Christmas. The particle, Chi-b (3P), consists of a bottom quark and an antiquark particle bound together by the strong force.
Two experiments at the Large Hadron Collider have nearly eliminated the space in which the Higgs boson could dwell, scientists announced. However, the ATLAS and CMS experiments see modest excesses in their data that could soon uncover the famous missing piece of the physics puzzle.
8
Construction of a 12,000-squarefoot research campus a mile underground is nearing completion at the Sanford Lab in South Dakota. Scientists will begin to move the first physics experiments underground this spring.
A DOE workshop to explore research opportunities at the Intensity Frontier drew 500 people. Among them was postdoc Giovanni Tassielli from INFN in Italy, who feels drawn to challenging experiments that seek the rarest of particle interactions, the smallest of effects and a glimpse of physics beyond particle collisions.
Read the full text of these stories and more at www.symmetrymagazine.org/blog/february2012 Muppet scientists at the LHC
November 23, 2011
LHCb uses charm to find asymmetry

November 14, 2011
SLAC physicists use simulation tool to make cancer therapy safer

October 24, 2011
Physics fans will cheer to see that in the new film The Muppets, bespectacled scientist Dr. Bunsen Honeydew and his harried assistant, Beaker, have moved on to work on the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider.
Faster-than-light neutrino survives new test

November 17, 2011
Scientists from the LHCb collaboration at CERN have seen possible evidence of matterantimatter asymmetry: a higherthan-expected difference in decay rates of certain particles and antiparticles.
Originally designed to track subatomic particles in high-energy physics experiments, Geant4 can also map proton paths through patients bodies during radiation treatment.
OPERA neutrinos seem to beat speed of light

September 23, 2011
Tevatron trained people for more than physics

October 25, 2011 The OPERA neutrino experiment announced the kind of observation that keeps a physicist up at night: subatomic particles that seem to travel faster than the speed of light.
September 9, 2011
Test paves way for 15,000-ton behemoth

November 17, 2011
Beyond smashing particles together, the Tevatron also launched many careers in fields beyond particle physics. Ron Moore, former head of Fermilabs Tevatron Department, has started a new endeavor as a medical physicist.
Preparations for the assembly of the 15,000-ton NOA neutrino detectorquite possibly the largest plastic structure ever to be builtpassed a pivotal test.
9
According to EXOs measurements of two-neutrino doublebeta decay in Xenon-136, it takes 100 billion times longer than the universe has even existed for half of a sample of this radioactive isotope to decay.
The OPERA experiments surprising superluminal neutrino result is holding fast after a new measurement designed to eliminate a possible source of systematic error from its previous tests.
EXO releases first results
Do you know why I pulled you over?
Exceeding the speed of light has consequences, evenespecially? for neutrinos. By Judith Jackson
10
: oto Ph
r ida Re
h Ha
11
On September 23, 2011, a press release from CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, announced a seminar to be held that very afternoon. Members of the OPERA neutrino experiment would describe their observation of what appeared to be a new property of neutrinos. Observing and describing new particle properties is what particle physicists do. Every year they publish hundreds of scientific papers, each shedding some new light, however faint, on the properties of the elementary particles and forces of the world around us. Little by little, bit by bitor so the orthodoxy goesover the years these observations construct the extraordinary edifice of our understanding of the fundamental physics of the universe. Some of these hundreds of papers attract interest within the particle physics community. A few cause a stir at physics conferences. A tiny number come to the notice of the science-minded media. Hardly any get their own press conferences. The OPERA result was different. After months of checking and cross-checking their measurements, their instruments, their assumptions, their math and anything else they could think of, the OPERA collaborators appeared to have observed a remarkable property of the neutrinos beaming from CERN, in Geneva, to the OPERA detector in the Gran Sasso National Laboratory in central Italy, 730 kilometers away. The neutrinos appeared to be traveling faster than light.
How fast was I going? Specifically, the neutrinos from CERN arrived at Gran Sasso one 60-billionth of a second sooner than they should have. They crossed the finish line in Italy 20 meters ahead of light. What? We may not know much about physics, but theres one thing were sure of, right? Nothing can exceed the speed of light in a vacuum. As the T-shirt says: 186,000 miles per second. Its not just a good idea, its the law. And yet those neutrinos, some 15,000 of them, appeared to have done it. It looked as if theyd been caught speeding. That called for a press conference. In the press release and at the CERN seminar, the OPERA collaborators presented their astonishing finding with the utmost circumspection. They hadnt set out to catch neutrino speeders; theyd been looking for oscillation from one neutrino type to another. They were as shocked as anyone when they clocked neutrinos at light-defying speeds. They assumed they must be wrong. But after months of scrutinizing their results and coming up with the same answer, they decided the time had come to ask the broader physics world to take a look. They especially invited other neutrino experiments, with different teams and different instruments, to see if their neutrinos also outpaced light. James Gillies, CERNs chief of communication, had learned of the result at a meeting some 10 days earlier. It was immediately obvious to me that this
12
story would be huge, Gillies said. I think the OPERA people knew that too. However, I think they felt a little overwhelmed by the response. And well they might have, because before you could say faster-than-light-neutrinos, all hell broke loose. Faster than light? Ill eat my shorts. All hell broke loose in the physics community because, if neutrinos really did travel faster than light, most of modern physics would go out the window. Einsteins 1915 theory of general relativity, the bedrock of 21st-century physics, has profound implications for everything from the workings of your GPS to the big bang to the size of the universe. Built into the theory of general relativity is Einsteins 1905 theory of special relativity, which established the speed of light as the ultimate universal speed limit. If neutrinos really did break the speed limit, if E = mc turned out to be wrong, the implications for physicsand physicistswould be unimaginable. My first reaction was shock and disbelief, Stanford physicist Stan Wojcicki, a long-time leader of Fermilabs MINOS neutrino experiment, told a radio interviewer. In 2007, MINOS itself had reported a possible sighting of neutrinos exceeding the speed limit, but the result was not statistically significant, and most physicists had dismissed it. Furthermore, there was sound experimental evidence to put neutrinos squarely among the ranks of the law abiding. Observers had reported
extremely precise measurements of the speed of both light and neutrinos arriving on Earth from an exploding star known as Supernova 1987A. Given the enormous tracts of the universe they traversed, if neutrinos were traveling at the speeds OPERA recorded, they should have arrived on Earth a year sooner than light. In fact, the neutrinos from the supernova showed up exactly when observers expected, right on time. Still, despite their skepticismone physicist volunteered to eat his boxer shorts in public if the result held upand their cold sweat about taking physics back to square one, scientists overwhelmingly expressed respect for OPERAs work and for the scientific process. Notwithstanding his incredulity, Wojcicki said, I congratulate my [OPERA] colleagues on their meticulous work. This could turn out to be the most important experiment of the century. Yale neutrino physicist Bonnie Fleming agreed. Amid all the skepticism about the OPERA result, she told a group of students a few days after the CERN announcement, lets remember that neutrinos have surprised us before. For their part, theorists wasted no time wading in. Maybe, some said, neutrinos just have a different speed limit from other particles, as if the authorities set one limit for Ferraris and another for everything else on the road. Maybe neutrinos were born faster than light and just never looked back. Maybe theyre tachyons. Experimenters and theorists alike agreed
Speed of light: 299,792,458 m/sec Speed of neutrinos measured by OPERA: 299,798,454 m/sec
13
Something shaking in the firmament? What is it about faster-than-light neutrinos that made them such an instant sensation in the popular media? How could Gillies so accurately predict that the story would be huge? Okay, here is my take, says University of Chicago astrophysicist Michael Turner. Just saying Heard the one about the neutrino? Einstein was wrong gets peoples attention, Meanwhile, far beyond the world of physics theory and experiment, the story took off in popular but when how he is wrongspeed limitis easy to understand, the situation is combustible. culture. The webcast of a garden-variety CERN seminar Add to that the fact that many people are pissed off at the idea of a speed limit and some even attracts an average of a couple of hundred believe that the speed of light is just like the viewers. When the proceedings got under way on the afternoon of September 23, some 120,000 speed of sound, a barrier to break, and you have a great story. people tuned in. There arent that many particle Michio Kaku, a theorist at City College of New physicists in existence, even allowing for parallel York, agrees. universes. Clearly, plenty of regular people were Einstein is the cop on the block, he told an also listening. interviewer. The speed of light is the ultimate More than 6000 neutrino news stories appeared on September 23rd and 24th alone, speed limit in the universe. At least it was until last week, when all hell broke loose with this with thousands more in following days. Still press conference. more stories came in a mid-November second New York Times science writer Dennis Overbye bounce when the collaboration issued a follow-up has a similar view. release explaining that theyd eliminated one The speed of light is one thing people probably potential source of error. think they know about physics, he says. Judging Discover magazine chose faster-than-light neutrinos as the science news story of the year, by the coverage I saw, a lot of the attraction was the Was Einstein Wrong? angle, which of course even though, the editors acknowledged, it might turn out not to be true. From the pages of dozens is a red herring. So people know that if this turns out to be right, there is something shaking in the of publications and websites, Einstein stuck out his tongue at readers, in the famous photograph. firmament. Other commentators cited the element of time Job applications to CERN climbed by 50 perreversalthose jokes!and, perhaps optimistically, cent on the day of the press conference. Who a fascination with physics. wouldnt want to work where they make neutrinos Science writer Geoff Brumfiel says its a law of that break the speed limit? journalism: When the speed of light is broken, At laboratories and physics departments around the world, the phones lit up with pleas from there will be a story. The speed of light or a black hole. He also believes that fundamentally, people the media for interviews with any physicist who do take an interest in physics. could spell neutrino. Gillies, a physicist who can The neutrino story had all the elements to spell neutrino in at least six languages, was in high produce a global sensation: Einstein, the speed demand by radio and TV. of light, breaking the speed of light, Einstein Headline writers loved the story. Speed of Light Broken! Was Einstein Wrong? There Was mistaken, and time travel. The only thing missing was a cataclysmic black hole, although some a Neutrino Named Bright. Particles Faster Than the Speed of Light? Not So Fast, Some Say. stories made an attempt to work it in. The story couldnt miss. In the blogosphere, neutrino jokes proliferated: When experimenters finally discover the longsought Higgs boson, object of decades-long And the bartender says, Sorry, we dont serve faster-than-light neutrinos in here. So this neutrino searches and endless speculation, will the discovery produce the same worldwide cultural walks into a bar. combustion as faster-than-light neutrinos? The After neutrino announcement, Moodys downgrades Higgs lacks Einsteins imprimatur and as far as we know it moves slower than light. Still, perhaps Einsteins theory of general relativity to AA+. the Higgs will break new ground and engender excitement that eclipses even the neutrino furor. Neutrino. Whos there? Knock knock. Well have to wait and see. After all, as one recent blog comment noted, Even scientists got into the spirit. Italian Someone breaks the speed limit in Italy and physicist Sergio Bertolucci, CERNs research thats news? director, pointed out that the result could not be true because it breaks a fundamental law of nature: nothing in Italy ever arrives on time. on the need for more data and on the value of a scientific process that rejects no result just because its improbable or inconvenient. The long process of independent checking and What if? theorizing began.
14
15
Photo: Reidar Hahn
by Lori Ann White
16
or three and a half years, the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has been circling the planet in low-Earth orbit, scanning the sky for evidence of the most energetic objects in the universe. For three and a half years, data captured by Fermis instruments have been accumulating on a NASA server at Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. Who accesses those data, who analyzes those data, who owns those datathe very stuff of discoveryis not who you might expect. The telescope itself is a space-worthy particle detector built to capture some of the most energetic photons in the universegamma-ray photons slung out of the magnetic fields of neutron stars or the blazing hearts of active galactic nuclei, or thrown off the spinning accretion disks of black holes. Its a hybrid project, born of a partnership between astrophysics and high-energy physics, led, not surprisingly, by NASA and the Department of Energy. And when it comes to handling data, most scientists working on the project represent one of two distinct cultures. In particle physics, researchers tend to keep their data close, holding it within their experimental collaborations. Many of them have worked on specific particle detectors for years, designing and building and tweaking the equipment. They argue that only collaboration members understand the detectors well enough to interpret the data correctly. In astrophysics, big orbiting observatories like NASAs Hubble Space Telescope are generally at the disposal of independent research groups that are awarded blocks of observation time, based on proposals reviewed by expert panels. Observers typically get sole use of the resulting data for a set time periodoften a yearbefore they go public.
17
Illustrations: Sandbox Studio
Just how public is this data windfall? Anybody is free to download the data and the software used to analyze them, says Anders Borgland, a SLAC physicist who leads the data processing team at the labLocking up precious information about oratorys Instrument Science Operations Center, where raw LAT data are processed. SLAC managed the developthe whole sky for months so that a guest investigator with an interest in, say, ment and construction of the LAT and is still deeply a particular blazar has sole access to involved in its day-to-day operations. the data would not make sense, says Stanford Universitys The LAT has sorted through a lot of photons in its three Peter Michelson, principal investigator for the LAT. and a half years of operation, but the actual amount of data available for download is surprisingly small. The teleFermi is a survey scope. One of the wonderful things scopes triggera yes-no switch that decides if a charged about this mission is that were looking everywhere, particle hitting the LATs detectors is interesting or notsays Michelson says. The LAT can see about 20 percent of the sky at any one time, covering the entire visible sky every yes to about 2000 of these hits, called events, per three hours. second. But then a software filter reduces that to about But nothing as complex as the LAT instrument had been 500 events per second, Borgland explains. After this quarter-fold data reduction, the information flown before, and the team would need time to check it out, verify that it was performing as expected, determine the about the 500 events each and every second is transmitted via satellite relay to the White Sands Test Facility level of background signals and so on before unleashing it on the wider community. So the collaboration decided in New Mexico, then to Fermi Mission Ops at NASAs to wait a year, then release all the data as soon as they Goddard Space Flight Center, thence to SLACwhere the came in. amount of data is reduced another 10-foldand finally There are pluses and minuses to this approach, says back to Goddards Fermi Science Support Center (FSSC), Seth Digel, an astrophysicist based at SLAC National where its put on the Web. Borgland estimates that about Accelerator Laboratory who has been with the Fermi LAT eight hours pass between the time the LAT takes the data collaboration for more than a decade. Among the pluses: and the time theyre available for download. NASAs interest is in maximizing the scientific return from a mission. Also, to their credit, theyre interested in archiving Once uploaded, the data arent frozen. data. He sees that as evidence of NASAs commitment Taking a page from high-energy physics experiments, the Fermi data to making mission data available not just across space, analysis teams continue to learn but across time, too. Among the minuses: The data management decisions more about their instruments, using that knowledge to
But the scientists working with Fermis main instrument, the Large Area Telescope or LAT, do neither. After Fermis first year in orbitas much a time to verify that the telescope worked as a data-gathering period the LAT collaboration posted all of its data online. And it continues to put the data online just as fast as the instruments on the scope can spit it out and crews on the ground can process it.
were pretty painful, Digel says. Another minus? Were giving away great stuff. Another plus: Theres lots of it. In a sense, theres plenty to go around.
Systems on board the Fermi space telescope sort through collected LAT data and preserve only the most relevant hitsabout 500 events per secondwhich are transmitted via satellite to the White Sands Test Facility in New Mexico.
18
From White Sands, data travel to Fermi Mission Ops at NASAs Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland.
upgrade the analysis software. Once a new version of the software is released all the Fermi data are reanalyzed. The team released data from Pass 7 this summer, after which researchers the world over checked the new data against their old papers to see if revisions were called for. Thats not so common in astrophysics, says Borgland, who hails from the high-energy physics side of the collaboration. Theres a trace of glee in his words. On the other hand, the publicly available Fermi data are formatted as FITS files. FITS stands for Flexible Image Transport System, the standard for astronomical data. The HEP people expected to use ROOT, a standard set of tools for analyzing particle physics data, says astrophysicist Digel. Im really not sure why. Take that, HEP. Such little digs are mild, but Michelson, the LAT principal investigator, recalls a time in the early days of the collaboration when these cultural differences were more pronounced. In meetings, people would say, Well, the way we do things in particle physics or The way we do things in astrophysics. I finally said, Lets stop saying that. He smiles. That was a long time ago. Fights break out, but not along cultural lines. Before the LAT data are sent to the FSSC at Goddard, they are processed. Processing amounts to much more than boiling down each seconds worth of events to the one or two really interesting ones. It also involves creating datasets that are of the greatest use to the greatest number of researchers: a list of photons with the directions they came from, the times they arrived and their energies, of course. Also sent along are data that describe the properties of the LAT needed for analyzing the photon data, but not much more.
NASA keeps an archive of the raw data, Michelson says, but whats released are high-level datanot the raw hits in the calorimeter and the tracker. Some analysis software is made available and the FSSC conducts workshops on how to download the data and use the available tools, but if the tools arent the right ones in the first place, researchers must develop their own.
ts, the trumen rlytwo ins ons as an ea . ermis ti y ller of F Monitor, func ics communit a The sm ay Burst trophys a-r e as h Gamm m for th mic flas . g syste erful cos up warnin dibly pow ly as they flare are incre as quick many y bursts de as -ra Gamma t can begin to fa ch burst with e GBMs a ea art of th bombs th aim to record ortant p nd . An imp tists the grou rve S cien possible e both on can obs tories as er instruments, observa so they longer form oth ngoing bursts in ugh job is to out o des thro e GBM have pace, ab energy as it fa by th and in s g of athered s are sent ourin ata g the outp wavelengths. D cation e er nd notifi sas of th and long n proprietary, a says Bill Pacie ipal e c s, e n never b 10 to 12 second struments pri in e in out with of Alabama, th ity ta Univers GBM da ator. data, the edure investig leasing c re pro actually e same am, comes to llows much th processing te When it e am fo data e sam ing te cope a Teles process follow th B M data G arge Are streams as the L ays. Both data xcept that the C. s e A below), aciesas an at SL P raphic, ther th il (see g at Huntsville, ra tra stop make a
From Goddard, LAT data go to SLACs Instrument Science Operations Center for processing.
They return to Goddard and the Fermi Science Support Center, which puts the data on the Web.
About 8 hours after Fermi detects an event, the resulting data are available to researchers all over the world.
19
What hes learned: Fermi may see the entire sky, but Scott Ransom knows all about that. Ransom, an astronnot at a very high resolution. When looking at a pulsar, omer with the National Radio Astronomy Observatory and the University of Virginia, has been a Fermi guest Ransom says, Fermi sees a blob. But something about the gamma rays is pulsar-like. So we turn the radio investigator several times over. That means he pores through Fermi data with NASAs blessingand funding telescope to that spot to check. Those blobs have been like nuggets of gold for pulsar to find previously unknown pulsars. Hes becoming adept at writing his own software tools, miners like Ransom. Weve been very lucky, he says. Weve found a huge number of pulsars by looking at the but hes done so with a lot of input from colleagues on Fermi blobs. the collaboration. Its been a back-and-forth process, Ransom says. Almost everything I do with Fermi data Not everyone who downloads Fermi involves the Fermi team, which often means the Fermi data does so with a collaboration Support Team at the FSSC, Fermis main point of conmember on speed dial, a situation tact for researchers outside of the collaborations. Theyre that raises its own concerns. There the experts. were real fears that data would be misused by people who didnt fully understand them, says Julie McEnery, Fermi project scientist at NASA. The responsibility for keeping that from happening, to the extent thats possible, rests with the Fermi support team at the FSSC. This is one of the key roles of the Fermi Science Support Center, McEnery says. They work with the scientists collaborating on the LAT and on the second Fermi instrument, the Gamma-ray Burst Monitor, to make sure that the public documentation is accurate, run analysis workshops and field scores of queries per week from guest investigators. Eric Charles, the LAT collaborations deputy analysis coordinator, says, It takes a real commitment of resources to release data publicly. Before we release the data we have to be prepared to tell people, If you see a particular signature, its not because its dark matter, but rather a known instrumental effect. Douglas Finkbeiner, a professor of astronomy and physics at Harvard University, can relate. As a member of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey collaboration, he was deeply involved in calibrating the data for hundreds of millions of objects. There are definitely expenses related to releasing your data, he says. Finkbeiner estimates that a good fraction of the budget for the SDSS software went to ensuring the quality of the analysis software and preparing
20
the data for release. I really do think its worth it, he says, but dont pretend you can do it for free. Finkbeiners support for the Fermi data release might have a bit of an ulterior motive: He knew precisely what he wanted to look for in the initial dataset, and he didnt need help to do it. In a 2004 paper, Finkbeiner had described a mysterious microwave feature in the galactic center dubbed the WMAP haze for the instrument that first saw it, the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe. He wanted to look at the same area through gamma rays, and marked the date on his calendar when the Fermi data would be released: We were looking forward to the data for years. Finkbeiner and his colleagues made their own maps of gamma-ray distributions in the galactic center and refined them as the LAT collaborations own data analysis tools improved and the data got better. What we definitely saw was a blob of excess gamma rays that correlated with the WMAP haze, Finkbeiner saystwo 25,000-light-year-long gamma-ray bubbles that burp out from the galactic plane in both directions. The resulting paper, which appeared a year ago in the Astrophysics Journal, caused quite a fuss. It also had only three authors, with nary a Fermi member among them, but Finkbeiner, who knows how hard it is to provide quality data to outside investigators, wants to emphasize why: We didnt need much help from the Fermi team, but only because they did such an excellent job with the data release and documentation, he says.
within the collaboration a very vibrant scientific environment, and people outside are also doing some very nice things. For McEnery, the bottom line is once again the science: Getting the most and the best science out of the instrumentof course we want the best minds on it. No matter where those minds may be.
21
Strictly speaking, the LAT does not detect gamma rays directly. Instead, it detects charged particles, including paired electrons and positrons that are created when gamma rays hit thin sheets of foil in the detector. Other charged particles of all types whiz through the not-so-empty space at the telescopes altitude, some 340 miles up. Protons, electrons, atomic nuclei, and even more exotic particles are flung into space by just about every energetic body: the sun, other stars, and especially such highly energetic phenomena as pulsars, black-hole accretion disks, and supernovae. The LAT picks up this random bounty of exotic charged particles, too, but the instrument is a gamma-ray detector, not a cosmic-ray detector. The extra data are more difficult to analyze and are not included in the packets sent to the FSSC. Only the photon data are made public, Borgland explains. But data are data, and LAT collaboration members couldnt let them go to waste. They used the data to confirm a 2009 discovery by an instrument called PAMELA of an excess of positrons in cosmic rays, resulting in whats McEnery is in a very good position currently the LAT collaborations most oft-cited paper: for a project scientist right now. Measurement of the Cosmic Ray e+ plus e- Spectrum from When doubts arise about Fermis data 20 GeV to 1 TeV with the Fermi Large Area Telescope, policy, she has three years of published in Physical Review Letters in May 2009. results to refute concerns. Data misinterpretation? LAT researchers didnt stop there. Theorists had conMcEnery points to Finkbeiners independent, solid analysis jectured that the positrons could be a sign of dark matter, that led to the Fermi bubbles result. Outsiders scoop the the mysterious substance that accounts for about 80 percollaboration too often? She points to the fact that while cent of the mass of the universe. In an experimental tour more and more papers are being published by outsiders, de force, the collaboration members used the Earths the LAT collaborations publication numbers have held magnetic field to split the electrons and positrons, improving their analysis enough to enable them to weigh steady. The collaboration is weakening? She points out in on whether the positrons suggested the presence that researchers are still joining. of dark matter. (The answer: Probably not.) The collaboration isnt held together just by the data, In a universe in which so much is unknown, even the says McEnery, who also belongs to the LAT collaboration. cast-off bits can be a precious commodity. Weve achieved a balance. Weve succeeded in creating
NUCLEAR WASTE
Particle accelerators have the potential to address critical issues for the future of nuclear energy
By Elizabeth Clements
icture a football field covered seven yards deep in metal containers full of used nuclear fuel. Thats the amount of radioactive waste roughly 65,200 metric tonsthat nuclear power plants in the United States produced in the last four decades. According to the Nuclear Energy Institute, a policy organization for the nuclear technologies industry, the US nuclear industry generates 2000plus metric tons of nuclear waste every year. Given the nations energy appetite, this rate of accumulation will not decrease any time soon. Yet today the only potential long-term storage option for nuclear waste in the US would be an underground geological repository, which so far doesnt exist. A particle accelerator may contribute to an alternative solution.
22
A powerful enough accelerator could generate a beam of particles to help transform spent nuclear fuel into a re-useable form. It could reduce the time required for long-term geological storage from 300,000 years to 500 years. And it could use an abundant natural resource, thorium, as a safer, cleaner, more proliferation-resistant fuel for energy production in nuclear reactors. Recent advances in accelerator technology could make this concept, called Accelerator Driven Systems or ADS, a reality in the relatively near future. While countries in Asia and Europe are actively pursuing its applications and building demonstration facilities, however, the United States does not have an active ADS program. Accelerator and nuclear physicists and engineers are pushing for this to change.
23
Protons for safer fission

At the heart of most nuclear reactors is a process called fission in which heavy atoms split into lighter ones, releasing tremendous amounts of energy. Uranium, the fuel source in the majority of nuclear power plants, naturally undergoes fission all the time, emitting neutrons as it splits. Those
A lot of technologies, including ADS, have been proposed to try to resolve the [nuclear] waste issue, says Albert Machiels, a technical executive at the Electric Power Research Institute, a nonprofit company that conducts research and development for all things related to electricity. To demonstrate its viability at a scale necessary to make a significant impact will require sustained R&D for long periods of time, he says.
neutrons hit other uranium atoms, causing them to split and release more neutrons, and so on in an escalating chain reaction. If this continues, the reactor is said to be critical, and the reaction continues until the uranium runs out. Most nuclear reactors use moderators to slow down emitted neutrons and control the fission process. The energy released by all this atom-splitting generates steam, which spins a turbine to drive a generator and produce electricity. In ADS, however, the road to fission starts with a linear accelerator. Although the details of proposed designs differ, the basic concept accelerates a beam of protons to 1-2 billion electronvolts of energy and slams them into a heavy-metal target in the core of a reactor. Each proton that hits the target generates about 30 neutrons, which drive the fission process. Turn off the proton beam, and the process stops. Such a reactor, one that does not sustain a chain reaction on its own, is said to be subcritical. An ADS system could use this subcritical process to transmute the most troublesome longlived components in radioactive waste into safer forms with shorter lifetimes.
Breakthrough in accelerator technology

In the 1990s and early 2000s, several studies in the US and abroad evaluated the potential for using ADS to treat highly radioactive components of nuclear waste by transmuting long-lived radioactive isotopes to safer ones with much shorter half-lives. However, at the time ADS was expensive and at an early stage of development. The studies found the technology had not been adequately demonstrated, and as a result the small existing R&D program was eventually terminated.
For an accelerator to treat nuclear waste effectively, it must work continuously. In accelerator-speak, that means it must generate particles in a continuous wave, rather than in discrete bunches. At the time the studies took place in the 1990s, linear accelerators had demonstrated that they could produce continuous-wave beams, but the technology wasnt yet reliable enough for use in ADS. In the last decade, however, major advances in accelerator science and technology have allowed scientists to demonstrate that a linear accelerator could reliably produce the continuous-wave beam that ADS requires. In the last 10 years, scientists around the world changed the picture by developing superconducting radiofrequency and other technologies that make it practical to create a continuous-wave linear accelerator, says Yousry Gohar, a senior nuclear engineer at Argonne National Laboratory. Scientists have selected superconducting radiofrequency, or SRF, as the technology of choice for next-generation particle accelerators due to its efficiency and ability to sustain high-power beams of a few megawatts or moreclose to the level of power needed for ADS. Besides supporting fundamental physics research, an accelerator using SRF technology could also open doorways to applications related to nuclear energy. But why use an accelerator as a dedicated neutron source to transmute nuclear waste in the first place? The safest and most efficient reactor process for transmutation would use ADS, says Eric Pitcher, a nuclear engineer at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Because the reactor operates in a subcritical mode, it is useful for specific applications like burning problematic constituents in used nuclear fuel.
The fuel process

MAJOR ACTINIDES Uranium (94.5%) Plutonium (1%) MINOR ACTINIDES Neptunium Curium Americium Nuclear reactor Spent fuel is separated chemically. Americium and curium are removed. Uranium, plutonium and neptunium are sent back to the reactor as fuel.
Spent Fuel
Graphic: Sandbox Studio

24
Americium and curium are sent to an ADS reactor.
ADS transmutes americium and curium.
Americium and curium become safer isotopes, with storage time reduced from 10,000 to 500 years.
Transmutation of
protons
with a subcritical ADS reactor

Accelerator An accelerator provides an intense, continuous beam of protons.
Graphic: Sandbox Studio
Spallation target The protons hit heavy nuclei and shake loose neutrons, which enter the reactor vessel.
nucleus
Transmutation The neutrons hit and split long-lived nuclei, such as americium and curium, creating energy and short-lived nuclei that are easier to process and store.
nuclei
Subcritical operation When the accelerator is switched off or loses power, the reactor no longer has enough neutrons to sustain the transmutation process and the nuclear reactions automatically slow down.
Fuel reprocessing
On average, the uranium fuel that drives a commercial nuclear power plant lasts three years before it stops producing energy efficiently. The plant operator then removes the spent fuel from the reactor and stores it on site. Power plants in some countries reprocess some fuel for reuse in their reactors, but in the United States no nuclear waste is reprocessed. In 1982, Congress passed legislation creating the Nuclear Waste Fund to establish a waste disposal program. For every kilowatt-hour produced, nuclear power plants contribute onetenth of a cent to the fund. Since 1983 the fund has collected $35.8 billion and spent $10.8 billion, according to the Nuclear Energy Institute. Yet 30 years later, a disposal program is yet to be established. Uranium makes up 94.5 percent and plutonium makes up 1 percent of used nuclear fuel. The remaining constituents are the minor actinides, a group of elements comprising neptunium, curium and americium, and other fission products. While curium is the most radioactive and hence the most problematic to process, Pitcher says, americium dominates the radioactivity level in a repository in the 1,000-year time frame, which can limit the amount of high-level waste placed in a repository. The utilities operating today dont want to take recycled fuel that has americium in it. They just want to produce
25
electricity, and the last thing they want to do is to take problematic fuel. Roughly 10,000 years must pass before the americium decays to the same level of radiotoxicity as the uranium ore used to produce the nuclear fuel in the first place. ADS would transmute americium into short-lived fission products, reducing this time to less than 500 years. ADS is well suited to treat the most problematic issue in nuclear wasteamericium and curium, Pitcher says. ADS will be expensive because you have to build an accelerator. So you want to focus on those constituents that are more difficult to burn in a classical reactor. One proposed process would chemically extract the plutonium and uranium from nuclear waste and send them back into a nuclear reactor as fuel. Pitcher explains that neptunium can go along with the plutonium and uranium, because those three elements together do not present reprocessing risks. Carrying the neptunium along with the plutonium and uranium, something that no country that reprocesses spent fuel currently does, would leave manageable amounts of americium and curium for ADS transmutation. If you isolate the uranium, plutonium and neptunium from the fission products and other actinides in the used fuel, Pitcher says, you can make new fuel from them and deliver it to a reactor site in the classical way that happens today. While those components are radioactive, you can
still manufacture, inspect, and ship the new fuel without exposing workers to significant radiation. A few ADS reactors would then burn, or transmute, the americium and curium that make the fuel so extremely radioactive. The US accumulates used nuclear fuel at a rate of 2000 metric tons per year, producing a little over three tons of americium and curium. To transmute that amount into safer isotopes would require operating three ADS reactors in parallel. Building three linear accelerators would be expensive, currently a few billion dollars. However, their cost pales in comparison to the cost of chemical separation and reprocessing of spent uranium and plutonium, the other essential piece of the fuel recycling process. Pitcher estimates the cost of building a reprocessing plant at between $10 billion and $20 billion, a figure that explains why few such plants exist in the world. France, the United Kingdom, Russia, and India operate reprocessing facilities. Japan will begin operating one in late 2012, and China is developing plans for a facility. None exist in the US, nor are any plans in the works. The cost presents a high threshold for a national nuclear fuelreprocessing program. However, by removing the most problematic components, ADS does make such an investment more feasible. And ADS systems have the added bonus of producing energy. As the americium and curium break down inside an ADS, their splitting atoms would produce energy, for which the world has an insatiable appetite. For the moment, though, most US scientists agree on optimizing the design of ADS for the purpose of transmuting waste and treating energy production as a byproduct that would make the system itself largely energy self-sufficient.
Turning off the accelerator immediately stops the fission reactions. Because thorium is abundant, produces much shorter-lived waste, and is highly proliferation resistant, a growing number of scientists around the world are pushing to develop it as a potential alternative fuel for nuclear power plants. India, Norway and Brazil have the worlds largest supplies of thorium. All threeIndia most activelyare pursuing programs to use thorium for nuclear energy. China also has an active program, as the Chinese too have a large supply of thorium. There is a market for it in developing countries, like India, where concentrations of energy use are sufficiently dense, says Roger Barlow, a physicist at Britains University of Huddersfield and chairman of the Thorium Energy Amplifier Association. While US scientists agree on the scientific feasibility of using ADS in a thorium-fueled subcritical reactor, Argonnes Gohar explains that pursuing a US thorium program lacks urgency because the country has plenty of natural uranium. Instead, solving the nations nuclear waste crisis should remain the highest priority, he says. If you look at it from the need point of view, the US has plenty of natural resources, but the country would benefit from using ADS for transmuting minor actinides to get rid of spent nuclear fuel, Gohar says. We dont have a storage facility right now, and were not pursuing a storage facility. Transmutation is a good possibility.
A demonstration facility
The proposals exist. The studies have been done, and the reports have been written. What remains is a demonstration facility to determine if ADS can achieve its goals. Major efforts are under way in Europe, where MYRRHA, the Multipurpose hYbrid Research Reactor for High-end Applications, has received construction approval in Belgium. MYRRHAs purpose is to demonstrate that using a high-power accelerator to treat highly radioactive nuclear waste is feasible and reliable, explains Hamid At Abderrahim, the MYRRHA project director. Currently in an engineering phase, MYRRHA will consist of a 600-million-electronvolt proton linear accelerator, a heavy-metal target to produce neutrons and a nuclear core. Abderrahim expects construction to begin in 2016 and full operations to start in 2023. Plans call for the project to run for at least 30 years, the time needed to fully demonstrate the concept. It takes several years for the accelerator to transmute the waste, and fully demonstrating the process would require several runs. If we demonstrate that it works, we can make industrial ADS systems with more power, Abderrahim says.
26
Thor: God of thunder

While US researchers focus on using ADS to treat nuclear waste, other countries around the world are pursuing the technology to produce energy. Named after the Scandinavian god Thor, the natural element thorium was discovered in the Earths crust in Norway in 1829. Thorium is widely distributed, three to four times more plentiful than uranium in the Earths crust. A beam of protons from an ADS would produce an external source of neutrons to drive a subcritical reactor loaded with thorium, a non-fissile fuel that cannot support a self-sustaining chain reaction. In an accelerator-driven subcritical thorium reactor, neutrons produced by a proton beam hitting a metal target breed uranium and promote its fission. These fission reactions could serve either for power generation or for the transmutation of highly radioactive components of nuclear fuel.
Mol, Belgium
Spallation Loop Primary Pump (x2) Heat Exchanger (x4)
Diaphragm Images: MYRRHA Core Plate Fuel Storage (x2) Inner Vessel In-Vessel Fuel Handling Outer Vessel
MYRRHA, a research reactor, is conceived as an accelerator driven system, able to operate in subcritical and critical modes. It contains a proton accelerator of 600 MeV, a spallation target and a multiplying medium.
In January, European scientists announced the successful test run of an ADS research reactor, Guinevere, a small-scale model of MYRRHA. Guinevere will allow us to experimentally validate all the control techniques and exploitation procedures of an ADS system, Abderrahim said in a press release. In addition to serving as an ADS demonstration facility, MYRRHA will also support research. Abderrahim explains that MYRRHA will be a multipurpose facility that uses accelerators to produce radioisotopes for medical diagnosis and to explore such commercial applications as treating materials for renewable energy technologies. The total estimated price tag for constructing MYRRHA is $1.3 billion. The European Commission and several countries in Europe are funding the design development for the project through 2014. The level of investment cannot be easily accepted by the taxpayer if you are only focusing on one objective, to demonstrate the concept of ADS, Abderrahim says. There is the fundamental research objective, but we looked at other uses so that the investment can be
shared with different user groups and research communities. Europe is not alone in developing accelerator technology for treating nuclear waste or generating energy with thorium, or both. China, India and Japan have all invested in R&D programs. At Fermilab, part of the proposal to build a highpower proton accelerator, Project X, includes a program to demonstrate the accelerator technology required for ADS. Project X would have the perfect beam for ADS, says Stuart Henderson, Fermilabs associate director for accelerators. In addition to providing a diverse physics program, Project X would serve as a platform for developing technology that could be important for supporting nuclear energy in this country. But the fact remains that a formal research and development program for ADS does not exist in the US. As more and more countries ramp up their programs, the US cannot continue to ignore it, Pitcher says. The national laboratories are ready to hop on. We just need the green light.
Fermilabs proposed Project X accelerator could help develop and demonstrate ADS technology.
Batavia, Ill., USA
Proposed Experimental Areas
Muons Kaons Nuclei Proton Source 3 GeV Continuous Proton Beam
27
The Tevatrons proud legacy

By Rhianna Wisniewski
28
Fermilabs game-changing accelerator revolutionized the world of particle physics research.
29
Photo: Reidar Hahn
Just after 2:30 p.m. on Sept. 30, Fermilab accelerator pioneer Helen Edwards prepared to stop the circulation of subatomic particles in the Tevatron collider for the last time. She was a fitting choice; Edwards and her husband, Don, had led the Tevatron start-up nearly three decades earlier. Now she would lay the massive collider to rest.
She pushed the button to dump the beam. Nothing happened. The Tevatronfor years the most powerful particle collider on Earthwasnt going to go quietly. Laughter eased the tension for several hundred people watching the event on screens in Fermilabs main auditorium a hundred yards away. Edwards second try succeeded, and the scientists who had gathered at the lab for the occasion took an afternoon to reflect on this remarkable machine. Physicists here took the Tevatron I got to help build and improved it and continued to do physics far beyond what it was originally designed for, says Rich Andrews, a mechanical engineer at Fermilab. In many ways, it changed the worldnot just with physics, but also with the technology that came out of it. For 28 years, between 1983 and 2011, scientists at the Tevatron used its beams of subatomic particles to gain a better understanding of matter, energy, space, and time. Their experiments revealed many new particles, most famously the top quark, and yielded countless achievements in detector, accelerator, and computing technology. What began as a revolutionary idea in the early 1970s grew into one of the most successful physics programs of all time, a testament to the dedication, creativity, and indomitable spirit of thousands of people at Fermilab who made it happen over the years. Their innovation and stubborn determination made possible the success of the Tevatrons design and commissioning, its subsequent upgrades, and the impressive legacy it leaves behind.
The first of its kind The idea for the superconducting accelerator that eventually became the Tevatron emerged in the early 1970s as the brainchild of Robert Wilson, Fermilabs founding director. The laboratory was just cutting its teeth on its first accelerator, the Main Ring, a machine that used conventional nonsuperconducting technology to send beams of particles to experiments at an array of fixed targets. The Main Ring had a lot of setbacks, and there were plenty of people who didnt think that the Tevatron would work, says John Crawford, former deputy head of the accelerator Operations Department. But Wilson, undeterred, forged ahead with the Energy Doubler, the Tevatrons original name, conferred because it would double the energy of the Main Ring. Bob Wilson and the people around him embodied this attitude: Try new things, says Bob Mau, retired head of the accelerator Operations Department. I had a guy in my group who came up with really crazy ideas, but I never dismissed them. Fifty percent of the time the ideas were brilliant. The other 50 percent were just nuts. Wilson proposed to build the Tevatron in the same tunnel as the Main Ring, beneath its ring of magnets in space reserved during Main Ring construction with an eye toward a future accelerator. As proposed, the new machine would generate twice the magnetic field and beam energy of the Main Ring. While it would power some fixed-target experiments, ultimately it would also guide particles into head-on collisions with total energies of 1.8 trillion to 2 trillion electronvolts, or TeVwhence the name Tevatron. Its higher energies would open whole new regions of physics
30
for scientific exploration. The plan included an antiproton storage ring, which became the most intense, consistent source of antiprotons in the world. While the ideas were exciting, execution posed enormous challenges. What magnetic field would be required to hold orbiting proton beams in the machine so they could collide over long periods? Where would the accelerator builders locate unprecedented quantities of superconducting wire and cable? Could they produce working magnets on a large scale? Building the worlds first largescale superconducting magnet system, along with the cryogenic system to cool it to temperatures near absolute zero, wouldnt be easy. As efforts to get the Tevatron on track ramped up in the late 1970s, physicist Leon Lederman, who succeeded Wilson as Fermilabs director in 1979, worked to bring the laboratory together in pursuit of a common goal: Build the Tevatron and make it work. People began to work around the clock, sometimes sleeping at the office, to complete the project. We did whatever it took to get the job done, across work groups and departments, says Fermilab engineer Paul Czarapata. We had a lot of cooperation. When the days work called for a cable pull, everyone would lend a hand. Don and Helen Edwards led five commissioning teams, each in charge of a different area. Mau served on Don Edwards team.
Onward and upward Once the Tevatron was up and running, it wasnt the end of the story. In fact it was just the beginning. The Tevatron of 2011 was not the original Tevatron, Czarapata says. It represented the evolution of ideas and a labor of love. It worked because of people who had intense pride in their systems. Thats why, if the Booster went down, wed see people in here at 3 a.m.because it was their machine. Superconducting magnets must operate at temperatures near absolute zero. Anythingmovement from a loose cable, for examplethat raises the temperature in even a tiny volume of the superconductor inside a magnet can cause the superconductor to quench, or switch to a normal conducting state. A quench forces the power system to rapidly extract the energy stored in the magnetic field of
Start of the Tevatron fixed-target program with 400-GeV beam and five fixed-target experiments.
Installation of the last of 774 superconducting dipole magnets for the Tevatron.
Tevatron accelerates protons to world record energy of 512 GeV.
Helen Edwards signs the placard that proclaims the installation of the last Tevatron magnet.
31
It was great to see the constant interaction of brilliant people, Mau says. To be able to sit in the middle of that was amazing. At 3:37 p.m. on Sunday, July 3, 1983, the Energy Doubler accelerated protons to a world record of 512 GeV. Those on shift and others nearby filled the Main Control Room to cheer and sip champagne. At first, the Tevatron operated as a fixed-target accelerator. Then, in 1985, with the completion of the Antiproton Source, collider operations began, with the worlds highestenergy proton-antiproton collisions. The CDF experiment recorded the first collisions in 1985; DZero began operations seven years later.
Tevatron named one of the top 10 engineering achievements of the last 100 years.
Signatures of CDF crew on Oct. 13, 1985, when first protonantiproton collisions were detected. First proton-antiproton collisions at 1.8 TeV.
the magnet and remove the beam from the machine. Needless to say, this unreliability affected the amount of physics that the Tevatron could do. During early operation of the Tevatron this sort of thing happened frequentlyevery day during some periods of runningand caused some to think, once more, that the machine was doomed. But Tevatron experts tackled each problem as it arose, and gradually the Tevatron began to run smoothly and reliably. Early in the development of the Tevatron, Sharon Lackey joined the team with the job of building the quench protection system for the accelerators magnets. It was the teams job to figure out why the magnets were quenching and fix the problem. I really enjoyed the problem solvinggetting something to work, she says. It was the puzzle to figure something out, work on it, break things, and then get through the drudgery until you got a breakthrough. The process was kind of addictive. By the mid-1990s, the Tevatron was running smoothly and discoveries were pouring in. Scientists were creating particle collisions at record energies, and the two detectors, CDF and DZero, were shining a bright light on the fundamental building blocks of the universe. In 1995, Fermilab scientists announced the discovery of the top quark, a key missing piece of the Standard Model of particle physics. Fermilab leaders realized, though, that upgrades to the Tevatron complex could reveal still more. This would require changes in both the accelerator and the detectors
Alvin Tollestrup, Rich Orr, Dick Lundy and Helen Edwards receive the National Medal of Honor for their work in building the Tevatron.
aimed at increasing luminosity, a measure of the number of particle collisions that occur each second. The more particle collisions per second, the better the chances for discovery. When you build a machine, you dont just build it. Every year, you improve it. You make it more robust, raise the intensity of the beam, and you make beams collide instead of just aiming them at a fixed target, Andrews explains. The laboratory set about making upgrades for the Tevatrons second scientific run and beyond. The most ambitious improvement, the Main Injector, was a new accelerator tangential to the Tevatron. It provided a better way of accelerating protons and antiprotons before injecting them into the Tevatron. Other upgrades occurred throughout the accelerator complex. By the time the Tevatron was shut down, it had achieved peak luminosities that exceeded 4x1032 cm-2 sec-1, or 400 times the design specification of the original machine. Each detector collaboration also added new systems that vastly improved their physics potential. The CDF collaboration installed a secondary vertex trigger, the brainchild of scientist Luciano Ristori.
32
First 8-millimeter tape (2.5 GB) used to record data from a particle physics experiment.
Experimenters of the CDF and DZero collaborations announce discovery of top quark. DZero detector observes first protonantiproton collisions.
This had never been done before, says Rob Roser, former co-spokesperson for Fermilabs CDF collaboration. A trigger is a system that examines every particle collision of the millions that occur each second to determine, based on pre-loaded criteria, whether the collision has produced particles of interest and should be recorded for analysis. The vertex trigger looked specifically for collisions producing bottom quarks. Identifying and measuring these particles can help physicists detect some of the most hard-to-see particles theorized in high-energy physics, such as the Higgs boson, the particle that scientists believe gives mass to all other particles. Upgrades at CDF also included an innovative new trigger that allowed physicists to select collision events to record while continuing to record incoming data. DZeros muon system was another innovative upgrade. Collaboration co-spokesperson Dmitri Denisov led the upgrade for the system, which allows scientists to see and measure the entire particle interaction region in the detector, with no blind spotsa milestone in detector physics. Arguably the most significant improvements made to the accelerator complex were a new storage ring for antiprotons and the implementation of a new system to cool, or condense, the particles in a beam to maximize the chances of collision. This system used electrons to cool the beam, allowing the accelerator complex to collect antiprotons at a higher rate and accelerate a denser beam, translating to significantly more collisions.
33
Tevatron sets world record for number of high-energy proton-antiproton particle collisions.
Russian-born scientists Sergei Nagaitsev and Sasha Shemyakin spent 10 years working with a small team designing, testing, and implementing the electron cooling system. Nagaitsev knew that the technology existed, but wasnt sure how to make it work at the high energies necessary for the Tevatron. Nagaitsev, who led the effort, attributes the systems success to determination and hard work, but also to intuition and a lot of trial and error. When electron cooling was implemented at Fermilab in 2005, scientists thought it could help increase the peak luminosity by a factor of 1.5 to 2. In fact, it became integral to the Tevatrons success, leading to an increase in peak luminosity by nearly a factor of three. The successful implementation of electron cooling has had a larger effect on the luminosity of the Tevatron than any other single improvement, says Accelerator Division head Roger Dixon.
Leaving a legacy Fermilabs Tevatron builders began creating a legacy of technological advances long before the machine started up. In order to build the Tevatron, the laboratory had to produce nearly a thousand superconducting magnets. To do that required procuring unprecedented quantities of superconducting wire and cable, a move that eventually helped pave the way for the development of magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI, for medical diagnostics. One of the biggest legacies is that we built the superconducting industry when we built the Tevatron, Fermilab physicist Jim Lackey says. In the words of the late Robert Marsh, former CEO of what is now Oregons ATI Wah Chang, still the worlds largest supplier of superconducting alloys, Every program in superconductivity that there is today owes itself in some measure to the fact that Fermilab built the Tevatron and it worked. Technology created for accelerators such as the Tevatron also spurred the commercial use of particle accelerators. An estimated 30,000 accelerators around the world are at work in medicine and industry to treat cancer, harden materials, and scan cargo, among myriad other applications. The components built for and perfected at Tevatron experiments are also at work in detectors all over the world. The Tevatron experiments developed and refined technologies used at accelerators such as RHIC at
Brookhaven, HERA at the German laboratory DESY and the two main detectors at CERNs Large Hadron Collider, ATLAS and CMS. CMS looks an awful lot like CDF, Roser says. The silicon detectors that track the paths of particles emerging from collisions in the CMS and ATLAS experiments are based on those in the Fermilab CDF and DZero detectors. No one thought that the silicon trackers would work in hadron colliders, Roser says. But they work really well. CDF showed that this was possible and now there isnt an experiment out there that doesnt have one. Even though the Tevatrons CDF and DZero detectors have stopped collecting data, researchers will continue to sift through the mountain of data collected while the accelerator was running, looking for signs of the Higgs boson and other new physics. The Standard Model, says Denisov, is the true legacy the Tevatron is leaving behind. It is basically complete, he says. Weve verified with very high accuracy the Standard Model and made it as solid as it can be. It might change, but in the area where it is applicable, it will never be wrong, he says.
Discovery of Bc meson, the last quarkantiquark pair predicted to exist.
The DONuT fixed-target experiment discovers the tau neutrino. Discovery of Bs matter-antimatter oscillations: 3 trillion times per second.
34
Working at the Tevatron has also taught hundreds of talented people how to handle giant scientific projects and collaborations. We have staff members here who are almost unique in the world. They have the capability to design and build an accelerator and the knowledge to make that accelerator operate, says Steve Holmes, project manager for Fermilabs proposed Project X. They are an extraordinary talent pool. Mary Convery and Consuelo Gattuso, who shared coordination of the day-to-day running of the Tevatron complex, say the training they got was like working in a hospital emergency room. Not a routine day went by. Being run coordinator, you see the whole puzzle. This is a logical, analytical job. Youre faced with challenges and problems and you have to figure out solutions, Convery explains. Without a crisis to resolve, there isnt a sense of accomplishment. The experience of running a big collideror building one from scratchis invaluable. It was the dedication and the unconventional thinking encouraged at the lab that allowed people and their careers to continue to grow. A lot of employees didnt have fancy titles, but they made their way up in the organization because they showed they could do the job, Mau says. In addition to Fermilabs staff members, thousands
of young graduate students received their training on the Tevatron. Theres a whole generation of particle physicists who got their training here, Denisov says. Theyre part of a scientific culture, the US culture of openness and independence. Without the Tevatron, none of these things would be possible. Jim Lackey thinks thats an often-overlooked aspect of basic research. The young graduate students in physics are doing research here and training as the researchers of the future, he says. These are the people who will go out and teach our kids, who will pass on to our kids the love of learning. The Tevatrons remarkable legacy also includes a foundation for the future. Fermilabs future experiments and projects will recycle and reuse some of the Tevatrons equipment. And none of the current or future projects would be possible without the technologies pioneered at the countrys premier accelerator. The Tevatron is the particle physics equivalent of landing on the moon. We achieved something that, scientifically and technically, wasnt possible before, DZeros Denisov says. Now its time to take the next steps.
Tevatron achieves luminosity of 4 x 1032 cm-2 sec-1.
Tevatron results favor a Higgs mass between 115156 GeV. Experimenters will have final numbers in 2012.
35
Discovery of single top quark.
gallery: kate findlay
Collider quilts
he Large Hadron Collider, a steely pinnacle of physics and engineering, doesnt generally bring soft, snuggly thoughts to mind. But that may change for people who see Kate Findlays quilts. For four years, she has been making fabric-based artwork inspired by the accelerator and its experiments. Ive been living and dreaming and sleeping and eating hadron colliders, she says. Photos of the LHC particle detectors in a 2008 newspaper article sparked the quilting project. Findlay was struck by the recurring circle-in-square
by Amy Dusto
motifcircular detectors inside the photos square frameswhich she says is a common pattern found throughout history in mathematics and art. Her collection debuts next year in a series of exhibitions throughout Southern England. Findlay used traditional patchwork for her three earliest pieces, Breakthrough, Inner Eye, and Does the Dark Matter? Because of the way fabric moves, this technique makes creating circles a fiendish feat. After six to eight weeks of sewing, and down to the final piece, she says, My heart
36
was absolutely in my mouth. Until she finished, she had no idea whether everything would line up and lie flat. Her other quilts are done with appliqu, a collage-like style of attaching pieces. Most are about 60 by 60 centimeters and take 1014 days to complete, though she has made a few larger, 130-by-130-centimeter quilts as well. Findlay uses unconventional fabrics, lots of metallic, shiny bits or sheers, along with beads, sequins, cardboard, and even barbecue skewers, which she inserts along the back to add rigidity. I started using everything and anything to achieve the effect I wanted, she says. Sometimes you realize youve just found the perfect medium. I feel I can get the effects I want with fabric. Findlays background is in textiles, and she teaches art at a private elementary school in Henley-on-Thames, England. The last two terms she spent on sabbatical to focus on the LHC quilts.
Inner Eye February 2010 Size: 120 cm square. Materials: Silk, synthetic fabric, pvc fabric and sequins. This piece is about scalethe vast Hadron Collider looking for infinitesimal particles. The eye was inspired by the shape of the framework holding up one part of the detector. The detector itself became the iris of the eye. I wanted a mini eye in the middle to suggest the scientists inward search for answers to the existence of our huge universe. Below is the ATLAS inner detector, the inspiration for Inner Eye. Photo: CERN
Breakthrough November 2009 Size: 90 cm square. Materials: silks, synthetics and cottons, a metal ring wrapped in gold cord, metallic mesh.
37
gallery: kate findlay
Does the Dark Matter? October 2010 Size:130 cm square. Materials: cotton, synthetics and silks.
In her spare time, she reads about particle physics, an interest that has grown from her initial fascination with the machine. Maybe Im just barking up the wrong tree, she says, but Im hoping my take and interpretation will still be valid. Findlay has yet to talk to a scientist and wonders whether one would notice details in her artwork that the average person might miss. Her recent pieces incorporate more of the subatomic world itself. She is particularly struck by the scale differences present in accelerator experiments: the vastness of the universe and the machines substantial bulk compared to the
38
The Alice Adventure July 2011 Size: 200 cm square. Materials: Cottons, sheers and synthetics. Below: Kate Findlay at work on the construction of The Alice Adventure in her studio.
minute world of particles. Her quilt Atomic shows the structure of a chromium atom in dots overlaid on a detector. Its the combination of huge and tiny, she says. I am aware the atom has far more space between its electrons, but that is where artistic license comes in. She hopes her unusual choice of subject matter will capture the interest of a more diverse public and increase the reach of the medium as a whole. Its just that a lot of quilts are pretty-pretty, nature-based, she says. Lately, Findlay has been expanding her topics and techniques. I am delving into some of the concepts put forward by physicists about waveparticle duality, supersymmetry, and string theory, she says, going on to explain that she bought some fiber optic cable and is experimenting with sewing it into fabric. There is so much more I could do yet with that subject matter.
Atomic April 2011 Size: 200 cm square. Materials: Cottons, silks, synthetics, satin and sheers.
Hadron4 2009 Size: 60 cm square. Materials: Fabric, wire, cords, foam board, on hardboard. Note: This piece is not a quilt, although much of it is made with fabric.
39
accelerator apps: radioisotopes From accelerator to patient

In 1930, Ernest Lawrence observed a curious aspect of his new atom-smashing accelerator, the cyclotron: The decaying isotopes it produced continued to emit gamma rays long after emerging from the collisions that produced them. When Ernest told his brother John, a physician, about the radiating isotopes, the field of nuclear medicine was born. In the postwar years, the technology burgeoned into a widely recognized cancerfighting tool. Today, tens of millions of patients each year are diagnosed and treated with acceleratorbased radioisotopes. While radioisotopes with long half-lives are often formed in nuclear reactors, more than 300 cyclotrons across the United States produce short-lived isotopes for hospitals. The cyclotrons work by spiraling charged particles such as protons around a magnet, outward from the center. To produce the isotope fluorine-18, for example, when the particles reach an energy of about 10 million to 15 million electronvolts they slam into a water target enriched with the oxygen-18 isotope. The resulting fluorine-18 isotope is chemically separated and combined with a sugary glucose compound that is ready for delivery to the hospital or clinic. The process takes as little as a few minutes.
Image: TRIUMF
With a 110-minute half-life, 18F is has wide use in diagnostic imaging. The 18F glucose compound is an energy source for cells in the body. Administered intravenously, the compound collects in areas of high metabolic activity, such as cancerous tumors. Then a positron emission tomography (PET) scan of the emitted gamma rays provides detailed three-dimensional images of the cancer. 18F metabolic imaging has had a major impact on the process of determining the cancer stage and in evaluation of the response to therapy, said Jack Correia, director of the Cyclotron Laboratory at Massachusetts General Hospital. Nowadays in the United States, Western Europe, Japan or Australia an individual with a preliminary diagnosis of a malignancy would wind up having an 18F scan. Some radiotherapy treatments implant metallic radioisotope seeds with relatively long half-lives directly into a tumor, where the emitted gamma rays destroy the cancer cells. Due to its extra-long half-life of 66 hours and its ability to produce a shorter-lived daughter, the most popular isotope for diagnostic imaging is molybdenum-99, or Moly-99 for short. Produced abroad by only three nuclear reactors devoted to radioisotope production, Moly-99 is involved in more than 50,000 procedures worldwide each day. Physicists hope to develop accelerators in the United States to reliably mass-produce Moly-99 and other radioisotopes. Brad Hooker
40
logbook: W precision measurement

Courtesy of Duke University
someday the Tevatron could have the best result in the is one of the world again, Kotwal recalls. fundamental The project wouldnt be easy. Obtaining precise meaingredients that scientists use to calculate particle physics surements of the energy and other properties of the properties, such as the most likely mass of the soughtafter Higgs particle. Discovered in 1983, the W boson is one particles emerging from a single proton-antiproton collision at the Tevatron was a daunting task. of four known types of particles that transmit the forces In July 2004, Kotwal and his collaborators began preparof nature. It weighs about 86 times the mass of a proton. For many years, only proton and antiproton accelerators, ing for meetings with their CDF godparents, three CDF or hadron colliders, at CERN and Fermilab had enough scientists who would independently scrutinize their analysis beam energy to create W bosons and enable mass mea- before blessing it for publication. In this July 15 logbook entry, Kotwal documented the long list of uncertainties that surements. But in 1996, after an energy upgrade, the he and his collaborators would have to understand to Large Electron Positron collider at CERN, a lepton collider, started to produce pairs of W bosons and delivered make the worlds best W mass measurement and convince other scientists that their result was trustworthy. the worlds best W mass measurements. Few people Two and a half years later, Kotwal presented the result believed that hadron colliders, with their messy collisions spewing out hundreds of particles, could ever again provide in a talk at Fermilab: the W mass was 80,413 +/- 48 MeV/c2, better information on the W boson mass than the clean measured with a world-record precision of 0.06 percent. collisions of a lepton collider. In a press release, CDF scientists announced that the But Ashutosh Kotwal thought otherwise. In 1999, the new value suggested the Higgs particle to be lighter than Duke University physicist began to study proton-antiproton previously thought. collisions with CDF, one of two collider detectors at The result changed how scientists thought about the ability of hadron colliders to make precision measurements, Fermilabs Tevatron. He started a long-term program to says Kotwal, who now works on the Large Hadron Collider. obtain a precise W mass measurement, using the expeOur experience now helps with the analysis of LHC data. rience he had gathered by measuring the W mass with the other Tevatron detector, DZero. I had the feeling that Kurt Riesselmann
The W boson mass
symmetry
symmetry A joint Fermilab/SLAC publication PO Box 500 MS 206 Batavia Illinois 60510 USA
explain it in 60 seconds
Cosmic microwave background
is the oldest light in the universe. It was set free when the universe was a mere 380,000 years old and provides a window to the early universe. The big bang created a universe filled with an opaque gas of charged particles. The light within this gas was trapped, as it could travel only short distances before bouncing off a charged particle. About 380,000 years after the big bang, the gas had cooled and become transparent as charged particles combined to form neutral atoms. Light from any point within the gas could now travel freely in all directions, carrying with it information about the young universe. From any point within this huge gas bubble, some light headed in Earths direction. That is the cosmic microwave background that we observe. It last interacted with matter 13.7 billion years ago. Most of this light is currently in the microwave part of the spectrum, with a longer wavelength than visible or infrared light. Using antennae, scientists first identified the cosmic microwave background in the 1960s. Since then physicists have built more and more sophisticated instruments to capture increasingly better images of the 380,000-year-old universe. The latest instruments, including the Planck satellite and the South Pole Telescope, are capturing tiny fluctuations in the light with unprecedented precision. In combination with galaxy surveys, these observations help illuminate the formation of galaxies and larger-scale structures in the universe. Kurt Riesselmann

Feb 2012 Symmetry Magazine

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Description:

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Feb 2012 Symmetry Magazine

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

symmetry

A joint Fermilab/SLAC publication

dimensions of particle physics

volume 9 | issue 1 | february 2012

Moose and the Higgs boson

Photo: Peter Limon

from the editor

symmetry | volume 9 | issue 1 | february 2012

commentary: jim siegrist

Photo: Berkeley Lab

Forging ahead toward the frontiers

symmetry | volume 9 | issue 1 | february 2012

Journey to the center of the Earth

Image courtesy of KamLAND

symmetry | volume 9 | issue 1 | february 2012

Photo courtesy of KamLAND

X-rays reveal poison in Mona Lisa model

Image: Brookhaven National Laboratory symmetry | volume 9 | issue 1 | february 2012

Photo: Reidar Hahn

Science for all and all for science.

A brainy look at dark matter

symmetry | volume 9 | issue 1 | february 2012

Images courtesy of David Kirkby

A stamp of her own

Photo: US Postal Service

symmetry | volume 9 | issue 1 | february 2012

symmetrybreaking Highlights from our blog

Fermilab to build Illinois Accelerator Research Center

Digital artist wins CERN competition

Former gold mine readies for experiments

People, ideas pack Intensity Frontier Workshop

LHC discovers its first particle

Hints of the Higgs remain in analyses

symmetry | volume 9 | issue 1 | february 2012

LHCb uses charm to find asymmetry

SLAC physicists use simulation tool to make cancer therapy safer

Faster-than-light neutrino survives new test

OPERA neutrinos seem to beat speed of light

Tevatron trained people for more than physics

Test paves way for 15,000-ton behemoth

symmetry | volume 9 | issue 1 | february 2012

EXO releases first results

Do you know why I pulled you over?

symmetry | volume 9 | issue 1 | february 2012

symmetry | volume 9 | issue 1 | february 2012

Photo: Reidar Hahn

symmetry | volume 9 | issue 1 | february 2012

by Lori Ann White

Illustrations: Sandbox Studio

symmetry | volume 9 | issue 1 | february 2012

symmetry | volume 9 | issue 1 | february 2012

symmetry | volume 9 | issue 1 | february 2012

Protons for safer fission

symmetry | volume 9 | issue 1 | february 2012

Breakthrough in accelerator technology

The fuel process

Graphic: Sandbox Studio

Americium and curium are sent to an ADS reactor.

ADS transmutes americium and curium.

with a subcritical ADS reactor

Graphic: Sandbox Studio

symmetry | volume 9 | issue 1 | february 2012

Thor: God of thunder