Science Scene - Supercollider

This entry is due to an entry by Pat at Roses rambling.  I left a quick comment there, but wanted to put up a more thorough explanation of particle physics.

 

FermiLab (Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory), located in Batavia, Illinois, was the premier particle physics laboratory in the world until the recent completion of the Supercollider in Cern, Switzerland.  My father worked at FermiLab from the day they broke ground in 1968 on the particle accelerator, until his death in 1990.  Batavia is in the middle of corn country, and this 16 story building (Wilson Hall) could be seen for miles away, and was a defining structure in the area.  My father's office was on the fifth floor on the right side.  My father was in charge of the facilities, requiring electrical, mechanical, and structural engineering knowledge.  As an electrical engineer by training, his pride and joy was the master substation below.  I remember spending many weekend mornings as a child going with him to the master substation, and was there when they delivered the then largest three winding transformer in the world, and when they built the capacitor bank (used to boost voltage, the blue and orange structure, do you think the colors are for the fighting Illini?).  No doubt that these childhood trips with my father is what inspired me to become an electrical power engineer as well.  Thanks for taking this little trip down memory lane with me, and I hope that you learned a little something along the way :o)

 

 

Wilson Hall and Ramsey Auditorium
Wilson Hall, inspired by a Gothic cathedral in Beauvais, France, is the focal point for administrative and scientific activity at the laboratory. It has office space for about one third of Fermilab's 2,200 employees. Performances of the Fermilab Arts Series, which are open to the public, take place in adjacent Ramsey Auditorium, which offers almost 850 seats.

 

 

 

 

Master Substation
On average Fermilab draws 45 megawatts of power, delivered to two laboratory-operated substations at 345,000 volts. With the support of the Department of Energy and in collaboration with commercial suppliers, Fermilab has instituted energy conservation projects, including the development and use of superconducting magnets. Recent improvements will save the laboratory several hundred thousand dollars every year.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tevatron
The four-mile-long Tevatron with its superconducting magnets is the most powerful particle accelerator in the world. Traveling at almost the speed of light, protons and antiprotons circle the Tevatron in opposite directions. Physicists make the beams collide at the centers of two 5,000-ton detectors inside the Tevatron tunnel, revealing the conditions of matter in the early universe and its structure at the smallest scale.

 

So, what exactly do they do, what research is performed, at a particle accelerator?  Is it dangerous?  Fermilab conducts basic research into particle physics - meaning they keep asking basic questions. They investigate the smallest building blocks of matter separated by the smallest distances that science has ever explored. They're constantly trying to learn more about these fundamental particles, and understand the forces that hold them together or force them apart. They conduct their investigations by making these particles collide-which might sound unusual, but remember that we see things in the world around us because photons bounce off them and make an impression on our retina, which is then transmitted by the optic nerve to the brain for processing. We're following a similar path to "see" what happens in these subatomic collisions-sort of like a giant microscope, using a different form of "light."  This is often done by using a bubble chamber where the particles leave a trail through the liquid.

 

Can the accelerators "melt down" or blow up?
No. In the event of a power interruption or failure of other equipment, each Fermilab accelerator simply switches off, like a light bulb or television set. Accelerators contain no harmful materials: the particle beams just stop. When equipment is fixed and power restored, operators are able to turn back on the accelerators.

 

Does Fermilab produce nuclear waste?
No. Fermilab is not a nuclear laboratory and has no nuclear reactor. It does not produce nuclear waste. Fermilab does create a small amount of low-level radioactive waste, which is properly packaged and transported to a Department of Energy Facility in Washington state.

 

Is there a benefit for such basic research?

 

                   Besides the sometimes far-future applications of advances in basic knowledge, the tools used to carry out the research can themselves be found in surprising and general applications.

• All modern forms of medical imaging technologies had their beginnings as detection devices in physics and chemistry. Many of the industrial scientists credited with the creation of devices such as CAT (Computer Aided Tomography) scanners were originally young scientists trained within the basic science community.
• Parallel computing, the use of many computers to attack different parts of a problem simultaneously, was invented by scientists who needed to process their data faster than the conventional, one-processor mode could achieve. This computing method has transformed such diverse areas as weather forecasting and market trend analyses.
• The use of particle accelerators not only for the scientific study of the collisions that they produce but as technological tools, has become widespread. The synchrotron radiation emitted when charged particle beams bend has become an indispensable tool for the study of new materials and making 'pictures' of living cells. Some hospitals now even have their own accelerators for the therapeutic treatment of otherwise untreatable tumors.
• Are you reading this piece on the World Wide Web? If so, you are directly benefiting from a tool that originated because of the need of large but far-flung scientific collaborations in particle physics to communicate quickly and effectively, worldwide. The Web, developed by the European high-energy physics laboratory CERN, has now transformed the way we find and use information, talk electronically to our friends, and view the events of the world. It is striking that the communications needs of a few thousand particle physicists should lead so quickly to so large a change in the way we live.

Tags: Fermilab, protons, particle accelerator, Cern, Batavia IL