 | Wednesday, May 4, 2005 |
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Wednesday, May 4 11:00 a.m. Fermilab ILC R&D Meeting - 1 West Speaker: A. Juste, Fermilab Title: Overview of Top and QCD at the ILC 12:00 p.m. Wellness Works & The Fermi Creative Writers Club - Brown Bag Seminar - 1 West Speaker: S. Weller (Author of The Bradbury Chronicles) Title: Predicting the Past; Remembering the Future 2:00 p.m. Proton Driver General Meeting - 1 West Speaker: H. Nguyen, Fermilab Title: Instrumentation Development for Proton Driver Era Kaon Experiments Speaker: P. Limon, Fermilab Title: SMTF Status and Plan 3:30 p.m. DIRECTOR'S COFFEE BREAK - 2nd Flr X-Over 4:00 p.m. Fermilab Colloquium - 1 West Speaker: D. Bryman, University of British Columbia Title: Decays: Status and Prospects of Experiments
Thursday, May 5 |
 Sunny 64º/38º
Extended Forecast |
Secon Level 3 |
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Wednesday, May 4 French Onion Soup Texas Style Meatloaf Sandwich $4.75 Grilled Chicken with Black Bean & Corn Salsa $3.75 Kielbasa & Sauerkraut $3.75 Three Cheese & Tomato Panini $4.75 Sausage & Pepperoni Combo $2.75 Fettucini Carbonara with Ham & Mushrooms $4.75 The Wilson Hall Cafe now accepts Visa, Master Card, Discover and American Express at Cash Register #1.
Wilson Hall Cafe Menu |
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Sci-Fi Writers Visit Lab
For Ideas and Information | ||
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Last Friday, April 29, a group from the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers
of America visited Fermilab and Argonne National Laboratory to broaden
their knowledge of science and gather new story ideas. The SFWA members
were in Chicago last weekend for the 2005 Nebula Awards, given for
excellence in science fiction and fantasy writing based on the judgment
of their peers.
Accelerator Division's Bill Higgins gave the dozen writers an afternoon tour of the lab. Higgins is not a science fiction writer, but was asked to lead the tour because of his decades-long activity in the sci-fi community. "These folks have fun learning about science," said Higgins. "I wanted to give them an opportunity to explore real science." While SFWA members write fiction, getting the science right in their stories is important. "We are science fiction writers," said June Jewell, executive director for SFWA. "There are a lot of scientists in our audience, and they want good science as well as a good story."
Richard Lovett, a professional geoscience writer and a part time sci-fi
writer, came to the labs looking for inspiration. On seeing the Crockcroft-Walton
he said, "You see this stuff and it fires your imagination. You can't get much
better than Fermilab."
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Judy Huite Heading Home
For Gardening and Travel After serving the Fermilab community for nearly 16 years in a variety of roles, Directorate's Judy Huite retired on May 2. The O'Fallon, Illinois native and her husband, Bob Huite of Business Services, who will
Judy is excited about retirement. "This really is a milestone. I now get to
do all the things I want to do," she said. She plans to spend her time
traveling with Bob, and gardening. In a few years, she and Bob plan to visit
Svendborg, Denmark, where they were married almost 25 years ago.
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Let's Play Chess | ||
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Last Friday afternoon, a very patient 7-year-old Bradley Guan
waited in the Fermilab cafeteria for a scientist to play a game of chess
with him. Bradley Guan had the day off from school, and his dad,
Computing Division's Richard Guan, had arranged for his son to play
chess with Fermilab Chess Club President Lenny Spiegel.
When Spiegel
got held up in a meeting, Bradley Guan and his dad decided to open
the game up to anyone who wanted to play. Eventually Brian Yanny, of
the Experimental Astrophysics Group, challenged Bradley Guan to a game.
"Bradley won 6th place in a State Chess Tournament
in February and 15th place in the Illinois 2005 Scholastic State Chess Championships
(2nd and 3rd Grade Division)," said Richard Guan. "He admires all scientists
and dreams of watching their work and playing chess with the Fermilab Chess Club."
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FYI: AIP Bulletin of Science Policy News, May 3, 2005 Senators Support Higher Funding for DOE Office of Science More than two-thirds of U.S. senators have signed a letter recommending an increase of 3.2% in the FY 2006 DOE Office of Science budget. Senator Lamar Alexander (R-TN) and Senator Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) were joined by 66 of their colleagues in signing a letter to Energy and Water Development Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman Pete Domenici (R-NM) and the subcommittee's Ranking Member Harry Reid (D-NV) advocating a $3.715 billion budget for the Office of Science. read more |
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SDSS Spectroscopic Survey Shows
Spongy Distribution of
Galaxies in the Universe | ||
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The Sloan Digital Sky Survey is really two surveys wrapped into one project.
The first survey is the photometric survey, which takes 5-color images of
the night sky. The photometric pipeline software identifies astronomical
objects in these images and determines their positions, brightnesses and
sizes. However, these observations do not reveal the distance to any object.
Finding out the distance to any object is the task of the second survey
inside the SDSS - the spectroscopic survey using the SDSS spectrograph.
A spectrograph works like a prism, deflecting light of different wavelengths
(colors) by different amounts and creating a spectrogram (or simple
spectrum). Each kind of astronomical object has its unique fingerprint in a
spectrogram, allowing astronomers to determine whether an object is a star
in our own galaxy or in another galaxy, or a quasar (a very luminous object
powered by the release of gravitational energy from matter falling into a
supermassive black hole). The universe's expansion makes the light from
distant objects appear redder when it arrives on Earth than when it was
This figure, created by Fermilab alumnus Michael Blanton (now at NYU), shows the distribution of nearby galaxies found by the SDSS in a small slice of the sky. On small scales, the galaxy distribution is not homogeneous; but there is structure on all scales, starting from groups of galaxies with just 2 or 3 members, to clusters of tens or hundreds of galaxies, and up to superclusters - clusters of galaxy clusters. Conversely, there are big voids in the galaxy distribution - vast stretches of space which are really mostly empty, and of comparable size to the superclusters. The SDSS is the biggest redshift survey so far, charting these clusters and voids in a large fraction of the sky visible outside the Milky Way, beautifully showing the spongy structure of the universe. All SDSS data are available online. | ||
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Result of the Week Archive |
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Monthly Windows Policy Committee Meeting The monthly Windows Policy Committee meeting will be on Wednesday, May 4 from 1:30-2:30pm in WH5SW. For more information, contact winpol@fnal.gov.
Brown Bag Seminar Today
Save the date! Witherell Symposium, Reception on Thursday, July 14
Mail a Scientist
International Folk Dancing
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