Fermilab Today Read More the Search for the Higgs Boson Requires a Veritable Army of Researchers

Thursday, Sept. 2, 2010

Have a safe day! DUSEL meeting starts today An ingredient for Higgs soup

Thursday, Sept. 2 The first meeting of the DUSEL users' 2:30 p.m. organization will start today at 1 p.m. in One Theoretical Physics Seminar - West. The agenda and registration information Curia II are available on the DuRA meeting website. Speaker: Simon Badger, Those who cannot attend in person can watch DESY Zeuthen the meeting streamed live. Title: Analytic Techniques for Massive One-Loop Amplitudes From symmetry 3:30 p.m. DIRECTOR'S COFFEE Accelerators for America's future BREAK - 2nd Flr X-Over 4 p.m. Accelerator Physics and Searching for the Higgs boson is not simple. Just as a tasty soup requires a blend of many Technology Seminar - Curia II complementary ingredients, the search for the (NOTE LOCATION) Higgs boson will only be successful through a Speaker: Shekhar Mishra, combination of many different analysis approaches. Fermilab Scientists need to use a wide variety of Title: Indian Institutions and techniques to search for the Higgs boson. In Fermilab Collaboration: A many ways, it’s like turning a pile of Road We Travel Together vegetables into soup. It’s only by mixing and blending the ingredients in exactly the right Friday, Sept. 3 way that one can turn a pile of rabbit food into 3:30 p.m. a tasty gazpacho. DIRECTOR'S COFFEE In this Illinois plant, a beam of accelerated electrons makes polymer coatings for wire and cable more BREAK - 2nd Flr X-Over heat resistant. One of the most difficult “soups” in the physics 4 p.m. world is the search for the Higgs boson, Editor's note: The new issue of symmetry, now Joint Experimental-Theoretical among the most complicated analysis efforts available online, includes an excerpt of the Physics Seminar - One West ever attempted. To begin with, we don’t know report Accelerators for America’s Future, Speakers: Michael Turner, if the Higgs boson exists. If it does exist, we published by the DOE Office of Science. The University of Chicago don’t know the particle’s mass. But for each full report can be downloaded as a pdf file, and Title: The Decade Ahead in possible mass, theory does make some clear Astrophysics: New Worlds, hard copies can be requested at www. predictions about how the Higgs boson would New Horizons and Fermilab acceleratorsamerica.org. decay.

Click here for NALCAL, A beam of particles is a very useful tool. Since the Higgs boson is the theoretical a weekly calendar with links source of subatomic particle mass, it to additional information. A beam of the right particles with the right preferentially decays into the heaviest energy at the right intensity can shrink a tumor, particles it can. If the Higgs boson’s mass is Upcoming conferences produce cleaner energy, spot suspicious cargo, large, it will mostly decay into a heavy pair of Campaigns make a better radial tire, clean up dirty drinking W bosons. This would be lucky, as it would be water, map a protein, study a nuclear explosion, the easiest way for physicists to detect it. design a new drug, make a heat-resistant However, if the mass is smaller, the Higgs will Take Five automotive cable, diagnose a disease, reduce most likely decay into a pair of bottom quarks. nuclear waste, detect an art forgery, implant ions in a semiconductor, prospect for oil, date Unfortunately, many physical processes result Tune IT Up an archaeological find, package a Thanksgiving in pairs of bottom quarks. Because of this, turkey, or discover the secrets of the universe. physicists search instead for a comparatively rarer occurrence – an event that results in two Weather The beams produced by today’s particle bottom quarks paired with a W or Z boson. In accelerators address many of the challenges such a combination, the two bottom quarks confronting our nation in the 21st century: are much more likely to have come from a energy, the environment, good jobs and Higgs boson. Chance of economic security, health care, national thunderstorms defense, and the war on terror. Higgs bosons have many decay modes and 82°/58° can decay into W bosons, Z bosons, bottom Read more quarks, photons and more. On top of that, a W Extended Forecast or Z boson can decay into a variety of Weather at Fermilab Commentary particles: electrons, muons or neutrinos. Thus Current Security Status physicists must search for many different Particle physics and America’s combinations of decay modes. Because Secon Level 3 future physicists try multiple algorithms or techniques to observe the same particle configuration, the Wilson Hall Cafe From symmetry, Aug. 2010 “search for the Higgs boson” includes dozens of types of analyses. These are extraordinary Thursday, Sept. 2 times for particle physics, Today’s result describes a search for events in - Breakfast: Apple sticks remarkable not only for the which a collision produced a Higgs boson and - Tomato Florentine scientific discoveries that Z boson at the same time. The Higgs decayed - Barbecue pork sandwich could be in store, but also into pairs of bottom quarks and the Z boson - Smart cuisine: kielbasa & for the very real decayed into electrons or muons. As sauercraut opportunities to address expected, this measurement did not (and - Smart cuisine: Chicken critical issues confronting could not) by itself find the Higgs boson, but it Marsala our nation. was a very important ingredient in the soup. - Smoked turkey melt Without many analyses like these, the recently - Assorted sliced pizza We are in the midst of a announced Higgs boson measurement would - Southwest chicken salad w/ revolution in the Dennis Kovar roasted corn salsa understanding of the very small and the very not be possible. large. For decades and more, we have been Wilson Hall Cafe Menu -- Don Lincoln talking about discoveries that may await us when we reach the ultra-high energies of the Chez Leon Terascale. Now we are there. As Fermilab’s Tevatron culminates its performance with record Thursday, Sept. 2 luminosities and the Large Hadron Collider Dinner begins operations, we have the possibility for Closed discoveries such as extra dimensions and supersymmetry that could fundamentally Wednesday, Sept. 8 change our perspective on the universe. If we Lunch - Sesame-chile chicken w/ are fortunate, over the next decade or so we gingered watermelon salsa could be in a position to rewrite the textbooks. - Basmati rice We also recognize that future advances will - Coconut flan require a new generation of technologies. The Chez Leon Menu detectors and accelerators of tomorrow will need more sensitivity and higher energies, and Call x3524 to make your they must cost less. The quest to develop the reservation. tools for future discovery is scarcely less challenging and exciting than the quest for the Archives discoveries themselves.

Fermilab Today Read more The search for the Higgs boson requires a veritable army of researchers. These physicists are Photo of the Day responsible for this individual Higgs analysis. Result of the Week

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ILC NewsLine Banana spider These researchers are responsible for the system that keep the DZero electronics synchronized. This crucial equipment is at the very heart of our data- Info taking system. Accelerator Update Fermilab Today is online at: Aug. 30 - Sept. 1 www.fnal.gov/today/ - Three stores provided ~37.75 hours of Send comments and luminosity suggestions to: - TeV orbit checks continue [email protected] - An AP0 exhaust fan tripped off and inhibited stacking Visit the Fermilab John Sachtschale of Technical Division's Design - Recycler DCCT calibrated home page Drafting Group took this photo of a banana spider outside of Trailer 157 on Sept. 1. - NuMI extraction kicker high-voltage cable reterminated Unsubscribe from Fermilab In the News - MI vacuum problems required access Today Panel throws Tevatron a lifeline Read the Current Accelerator Update From Nature, Sept. 1, 2010 Read the Early Bird Report View the Tevatron Luminosity Charts A Fermilab advisory committee has released a Announcements report recommending that the Tevatron's operations be extended until 2014, at a cost of Latest Announcements around $150 million. The Tevatron is a proton- anti-proton collider that produced the discovery Chicago Blackhawks Pre-Season of the top quark and that has placed constraints Discount Tickets on the mass of the Higgs, the elusive particle hypothesized to endow others with mass. Reduced parking behind Ramsey Auditorium - Sept. 7-17 Keith Baker of Yale University, a member of the committee, says the primary reason for Pine Street closures scheduled this week recommending an extension was the likelihood that an extended Tevatron run would find a Junior Prairie Rangers - Saturday, Sept. 18 signal of the Higgs at the statistical level of 3 standard deviations--the level needed to claim Workshop on Accelerator-Driven Sub- evidence, although not proof, in the particle Critical Systems & Thorium Utilization physics community. The extension would more than double the luminosity of the colliding beam, Toastmasters - today greatly increasing the number of particle collisions that are produced. Even if no Higgs is Bod Squad Muscle Toning begins today seen, the resulting data would be enough to bring the Higgs no-show into direct conflict with Sign up for fall Science Adventures observed masses for know particles such as the top quark--something that particle physicists Looking for league bowlers find as tantalizing as the possibility of an actual detection. "That is an indication of new physics" Bristol Renaissance Faire discount says Baker. Regal Movie Theater discount tickets Read more available

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Gizmo Guys - Fermilab Arts Series - Sept. 25 Researchers devise the first Family Science Time - Saturday, Sept. 25 experimental test of controversial, confusing string theory Submit an announcement From PopSci, Sept. 1, 2010

Is everything in the universe made up of vibrating one-dimensional strings? For the first time, scientists think they can concretely test string theory, the mind-blowing “theory of everything” that has dominated physics for the past two decades. It turns out that string theory predicts the behavior of entangled quantum particles, which can be tested in a lab — therefore testing string theory.