Debbie Harris

Sweet Muon in the Rock!

March 20, 2005

In the middle of this weekend's MINOS collaboration meeting, we saw the first direct evidence that the neutrinos from Fermilab actually made the 450 mile trip to Minnesota!  Although we've seen neutrinos interacting in our detector 2/3 of a mile away, until this weekend we haven't seen them interact in the detector 450 miles away.  This was not a surprise, since if (say) only one in a billion neutrinos that go through the detector interact, then you have to first send a billion neutrinos through! 

What we really saw this weekend was evidence of a neutrino interacting in the rock just upstream of the detector making a muon. That muon was so energetic that it went through the rock and entered the detector and it was within three degrees of the direction from Fermilab!  (see the energy left by that muon in the picture on the left).  That's not quite enough to prove that it came from Fermilab--it could still have come from a lucky neutrino that was produced in the atmosphere somewhere above Fermilab that traveled through the earth then interacted just before the detector in Minnesota. 

But here's the other hint--when we send protons to our target, it's over a space of time only 10 millionths of a second long.  So most of the time we're not making neutrinos at all.  But if you look at the exact time when that muon came in to the far detector, it was very close to the 2.4 thousanths of a second after a bunch of protons struck our target in Illinois.  (click on this live event display to see the kinds of events that usually happen in the far detector).

So what was so special about this one batch of protons?  Nothing, but we've been sending protons to the target at a much much higher rate this week compared to the previous weeks:  for one thing the device that cools the hall where the target sits is in and working, and also because persistent folks (Dave C Alberto M, Phil A) working on the beamline made some great progress in getting the best focusing of the protons down the line to the target.  Thanks to both of those breakthroughs we could send protons to our target much more often than we could the weeks before.  So were at the beginning of last week we were taking about 10 trillion protons every 60 seconds, now we can take 10 trillion protons every 3 or 4 seconds! 

The funny thing about this is that while people were showing plots of all our near detector neutrino events at our 4-day collaboration meeting this weekend, we made roughly as many neutrinos in these 4 days as we have collected over the past 2 months! 

People kept remarking on this fact during the meeting, and I couldn't help but remember something Isaac's first grade teacher, Jean Allmart, told me last year.  Mrs. Allmart has been teaching first grade for 24 years now, and she claims that the reason she loves teaching first grade is because she feels that children change more in the year they are in first grade than they change in any other year except the year after birth.  At the beginning of first grade Isaac couldn't read or write, add or subtract, and by the end of first grade he was doing all four of those things!  It feels like we made more progress this past week about learning to make neutrinos than we'll make in any week in the rest of the multi-year experiment!

Outreach 101

March 18, 2004

I was talking about last week's high school visit with Kevin McFarland, a very good friend of mine who (among other things) teaches physics at the University of Rochester and has visited lots of high school classrooms over the years.  Kevin assured me that this trip was even more unusual than I had appreciated--the fact that students could fill each period with questions for me was the sign of a lot of prep time for them and their teacher, and the sign of a very open-minded and self-assured group.

Kevin asked me if I would be interested in speaking at PARTICLE DAY, a big annual conference for high school students and teachers which is part of anoutreach program he directs called PARTICLE  (Physicists and Rochester Teachers Inventing Classroom Experiments ).  With all the excitement of just the past 3 months of starting up this new beamline I certainly have a good story to tell these students, if I can only figure out the best way to tell it!

It's funny, because last year's PARTICLE DAY talk (given by Sam Zeller, pictured at left) covered some of the same material I tried to explain this week during my high school visit, and I see I have a long way to go as far as graphical presentations! I hear with the animation in the original talk it's even better than the link shows.

After a few email conversations with both him and Sam I'm finding out that visiting high schools (and talking to high school students in lots of settings) is actually something responsible physicists do more than just once every 20 years.  There are a few cool talks given at actual high schools by people in the PARTICLE probram at this link. Given how much fun I had last Wednesday, I can certainly see why these folks go!  The strange thing is that I didn't realize all of this much much earlier. 

Back to School

March 16, 2005

Today I did something I haven't done for about 20 years--I walked into a high school physics classroom.  This time, however, I went to class to talk to students about neutrinos and about what life is like as a physicist.  I have spoken to tour groups coming through Fermilab before about "being a physicist", but it was really different to visit students on their own turf and to see a real live physics classroom. 

And what a turf!  I went to the Chicago Academy for the Arts, which is a college-prep school for the performing, visual and media arts, and it was like walking onto the set of the movie Fame--there were posters of summer arts programs, two art galleries, lots of big windows, all housed in a huge very old building with hardwood floors and super high ceilings and enormous windows.  When I walked into the physics classroom of my fine host, (Deb Koolbeck, who is also on the NOvA experiment with me),  I was amazed to see not only arts and physics posters intermingling everywhere, but the desks in her big airy classroom were all in a circle!  When I was in college I was impressed when I walked into my first French Literature class and saw chairs all around a big table instead of everyone facing the front.  But I'd never imagined things could be set up like this for a physics class.  It was also eye-opening to witness Ms. Koolbeck talking about physics with the students before class started--I was clearly in the presence of teaching greatness! 

So I talked to four circles of students--my camera can't even come close to capturing what it felt to be giving talk in such an unusual configuration--I always felt like I had my back to someone.  Here are selected shots of different groups of the students--taken over three periods (I was too shy to take pictures for the first hour). 

And sure enough, these students asked questions that I had never been asked before--one student asked if there were any poetic folks who were physicists (to which the answer is most assuredly yes!).  In two different classes I got asked the question "Do you think doing physics changes the way you look at the rest of your life?"  to which my first answer was that "No, the rest of my life probably changes the way I look at physics--at least the part of physics that has to do with convincing people to work together".  Now that I've thought about the question longer I can say it goes both ways--I think that part of the way I explain things to my kids comes from of being a scientist--or at least, I try to always answer their questions with questions (Why do you think there are so many worms on the sidewalk after it rains?).

Although I don't know if any of these students will become physicists, maybe one of them will play one on TV someday, one of them may pen a famous comic strip with a physicist character, one of them may be the deciding vote in the Senate on the US basic research budget, and certainly all of them will someday pay taxes to support basic science.  In fact, almost all of the questions I got asked that day were about neutrinos: what are they, how do you make a beam of them, what happens to that beam after it goes through the earth to Minnesota?  All four classes asked the question "What are the direct benefits of this work?" and I have to say they all seemed satisfied with benefit of better understanding of the most plentiful (and most elusive) massive particle in the Universe.  And heck, if this research happens to produce a new medical imaging technology or a faster way to transmit data over the internet, no one will complain...

I've been talking about this visit with other friends in physics who do much more outreach than I do, see the next entry to get the bigger picture! 

By the end of the fourth class I was high on all the good questions but also totally exhausted.  I can't quite imagine how teachers manage to do this five days a week without collapsing!  The next few days, which were filled with a MINOS collaboration meeting, seemed like a vacation by comparison. 

Happy Birthday Isaac!

March 13, 2005

Boy do I feel old now--why is it that when my son turned 8 this weekend it felt like a bigger deal than when I turned 37 last August?  It must have something to do with the big party we had for him on Saturday.  Although I really like cooking and I love parties, I am just not organized enough to make a real grown-up party.  However, there are now two times a year when I have to be organized and make a party--the parties just happen to be about half kids, half adults, and there's a birthday cake and candles somewhere in the middle.

This weekend's party was no different, although I prepared for the party in a pretty leisurely way for a change.  I took Friday "off" and after volunteering in Isaac's school in the morning (where I discussed the population and geographical characteristics of the great state of Maine with about 10 2nd-graders one on one), I cooked/worked from home all afternoon.  The menu at Isaac's party this year was pesto and plain noodles for the kids, and polenta lasagne for the adults (plus lots of cut up fruits and veggies).  Dessert was birthday cake of course, and chocolate chip cookies just in case anyone didn't like cake.

I am never sure how these parties will work out--when Isaac was at the Fermilab day care we always just invited family and a bunch of kids from Isaac's class and since everyone knew eachother they all played together well, and all the parents knew eachother well too and we had lots to talk about.  But now that Isaac is in "regular school" we invite kids from his new school, kids from the Fermilab day care, and kids from his Sunday school.  Probably the only one who knew everyone walking through the door was Isaac himself, and he was way too busy to make introductions. But I think there was a lot more mixing this year than last year, and of course the kids barely stopped running around long enough to notice who was from where.  The sweetest thing to see is how close Isaac still is with his friends from the Fermilab day care, whom he now only sees at birthday parties. 

All in all there were 18 kids (ages 2 to 10) and 17 adults (ages 30? to 64).  The scariest part for me was when we did the pinata--why I agreed to have a pinata in my house with an aluminum bat in a small room with that many kids is a bit of a mystery...but it all worked out and I think even the smallest kids came away with more candy than their parents would have wanted. 

My friends with older kids tell me that one day Isaac will want to have a real honest to goodness kid party without so many grownups and siblings, and I guess once that happens I might finally start figuring out how to throw grown-up parties.  But until then I'll enjoy the fact that I can party with my kids.   

Shift Schedules

March 8. 2005

So the announcement on MINOS this week is that starting next week, the neutrino beamline will be operating 24 hours a day, seven days a week, just like an actual running experiment!  It feels like there is still so much to do between now and then--writing instructions to tell people on shift what to look at while the beam is really running, doing a whole bunch of special studies where you tweak little things up and down the beamline and make sure everything responds like you expect it to respond, etc.  Also, we have to make sure there are enough people to take shifts:  we need 2 people at all times looking at things in the MINOS control room, but at this early stage there should also be someone from the experiment in the Main Control room, a room which functions as the brain of the entire accelerator complex at Fermilab.  This week I started to learn how to take a neutrino beamline shift in the Main Control Room, which is fun but quite a daunting task...

On the other side of life, Isaac lost another tooth this weekend.  I have been so exhausted the last few nights that on both Saturday and Sunday night I forgot to take the tooth out from under Isaac's pillow and slip in a dollar.  Isaac showed me his tooth again Monday morning, and I couldn't help but ask him why he thought the tooth fairy hadn't visited him yet, and if he was worried.  Luckily, he replied "I'm not worried, I think the tooth fairy just doesn't work on the weekends".  How did I manage to produce a patient child?  Anyway, Isaac was finally visited by the tooth fairy Monday night, which proves that at least she does not take shifts on the weekends (smart fairy that she is). 

At the risk of filling this entry with funny comments that Isaac has made, tonight while we were playing scrabble Isaac asked me if "m-e-e-n-o-s-e" was a word (he spelled it out for me like that).  I said "me nose?  that's not a word.  What makes you think it's a word?"  to which Isaac replied "Well, don't you work on meenose?".  I didn't let him use meenose or MINOS in scrabble...nevertheless he was still 30 points ahead when it was time for him to go to bed.    

How to Dedicate a Beamline

March 4, 2005

Today was the date of the famous dedication of the NuMI Beamline and MINOS experiment.  I have to confess that of the three experiments I have been on so far in my carreer, this is the only one that has started off with a dedication.  Probably this has something to do with the fact that this experiment cost 50 to 75 times more than each of the earlier experiments I was on, and also took much much longer to build--there are folks who have been working on this project for over a decade! 

So how do you dedicate a beamline and neutrino detector?  Apparently you do this by inviting the congresspeople from the districts of your beamline (Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert) and your far detector in Minnesota (Representative Jim Oberstar) to attend a dedication ceremony.  Once you find a date when both folks can make it, you invite various other dignitaries and everyone else who has contributed to the experiment.  So picture an 800-person auditorium packed with engineers, technicians, draftspeople, riggers, welders, operators, geodecists (folks who align things), administrative assistants, physicists, and finally about 60 MINOS physicists in either skirts or jackets and ties sitting down in front. 

Both representatives gave speeches, and folks from the Office of Science, and from the Department of Energy and of course the Laboratory Director chimed in as well.  People were making a big deal about neutrino physics being the next big thing at Fermilab, and how Fermilab was now going to be the world leader in neutrino physics.  To be honest, I kept wishing I could record and play back later all of these speeches, given how tough it's been to get funding for Minerva, a new experiment using the same beamline!

If you're particularly daring in planning this dedication you ask the representative from the beamline district to push a button on a laptop screen which actually results in protons being sent down the beamline to ultimately make a neutrino beam.  Then you ask the detector district representative to push another button which shows at least the near detector measuring neutrinos that come from that beamline.  Then everyone breathes a sigh of relief when it all works out as planned, and everyone piles out of the auditorium to be greeted by a lab-wide party with food and drinks and live music and dancing! 

But the most moving part of this dedication for me was when one of the heads of the experiment (Stan Wojcicki ) read a letter on behalf of the other head (Doug Michael), who could not be there because of his chemotherapy treatment in Los Angeles.  Even though the auditorium was packed, there were so many folks who could not attend this dedication--from the other ~150 physicists on MINOS who couldn't fly in just for the afternoon, to all the Fermilab day care teachers I was hoping could come (but who still had to watch the kids so they couldn't come) to my dear friend and colleague Nancy who flew to New Hampshire to see her father who I pray is recovering from pneumonia.  What Doug said in his speech was that this experiment has brought together a new community of people who have been strengthened by working together, and that the lab itself (and in fact the country) will benefit from the fantastic input of those folks who come for the science we can do at this new facility.  I can't really do his speech justice, but over the weekend I wrote Doug to ask him if I could reprint his speech here, and he very kindly agreed.  So I will hand this off to Doug now, since I think he says it best. 

Dear Distinguished Guests and Colleages,

As many of you are aware, I was diagnosed in early February with multiple non-Hodgkins lymphoma.  I received the first chemotherapy treatment on February the 10th and already am feeling much better.  The prognosis for complete remission for this kind of cancer is good, but that of course will take some time. 

I was hoping to come to Fermilab to join you for the MINOS/NuMI dedication ceremony.  Unfortunately, the logistics of my treatment have required that I remain in Los Angeles this week.  However, I have asked Stan to convey to you a few comments on my behalf. 

First, through the representatives of government at Fermilab today, I'd like to thank the American people for funding our research.  I find that when I talk to people about the science that we do there is interest and pride that we, as a nation, are able and willing to pursue new and fundamental scientific knowledge.  Although many do not understand the details, the American people seem to understand that fundamental science is worth pursuing and is important to the future of our country.  We need to push back frontiers of our knowledge.  More practically, basic scientific research proves to be a wise investment for the future through creation and development of new technologies to which it invariably leads.  Thank you for the opportunity you have given us to pursue this remarkable science. 

Next, I would like to express deep respect and personal thanks to my colleagues both within and outside MINOS for your support, not only over the last couple of months but over the last decade of building this facility and experiment together.  Scientific results are of course the goal, but they come only at the end of a long and arduous process.  It is only possible to get there by working together with people of great skill and diligence.  The end result may be just a hard number, but the process is intrinsically human.  It is a pleasure to have so many fine colleagues with whom to share this work. 

Finally, in my recent diagnosis and treatment I have frequently found myself marvelling at the technology that is available for 21st century medical care.  It is very gratifying to me to know that many of the basic ideas and techniques for modern imaging equipment were either first developed IN our own field of high-energy physics or BY people TRAINED in our field.  I have gotten a first-hand view of the remarkable achievements in the engineering, technology, chemistry, and medicine which enable us to effectively treat diseases like the one that I have.  And just as in physics, the glue that brings it all together and makes it work are dedicated and skilled professionals.  Just as in our own field, the combination of technology and people can produce fantastic results. 

I am eager to get back to Fermilab as soon as possible to help push forward with the exciting enterprise which is being dedicated today.  I will see you soon.  Doug