Talk:Fermilab

Should we mention current or past projects/experiments
I'm not sure if such transitory items as current projects should be included in what I believe is supposed to be a definition separate from time, and a long definition of the URA instead of leaving the link is peculiar, but in gratitude for what Blando728 has added to the document and in recognition of his grasp of the subject matter, I will defer to his judgement. Ayeroxor 18:40, May 23, 2005 (UTC)

The links to the Minos and MiniBooNE projects are valuable. What is wrong with leaving them in. One the article becomes out of date someone will correct the reference. --67.175.192.187 05:40, 30 December 2005 (UTC)


 * I agree. In fact, a section detailing the chronology of experiments at the lab would be quite good.  This, along with a "Fermilab today" section, would be the proper place for such things as links to pages for the various experiments. -- Jon Wilson

Closing of femilab
I have been working for fermilab from past 10 years. I am proud to learn when I was in school that Encrio Fermi was an Italian. I am very grateful for fermilab as I landed in US with no technical background and a Laura in physics from Italy and I was offered a position as computer professional and a good pay. I learned C, UNIX and I fermilab also sponsored me a M.S and PhD from DePaul university and I just graduated. There are lots of Italians and everyone is very friendly and very helpful. It is a very nice place to work for Italians. The rumors about closing fermilab are not true. They should not close fermilab. Enrico Fermi had a great vision about alien existence and this can be proved only by more research into neutrino experiments. US Govt should fund more money to fermilab and help build ILC otherwise everybody will leave and go back to Italy and other European nations so Govt should give more money to Fermilab and should not close it.

?
It looks like the Fermilab people are pushing really hard to be the site of the International Linear collider. It is possible that the Tevatron main ring could be used as an injector for the ILC?--Deglr6328 22:59, 6 August 2005 (UTC)


 * Yes, they are pushing hard for the ILC. They would almost certainly have to build new injector rings, though; the beam parameters are very different (for one thing, they'll be injecting electron beams, not protons). HEL 16:50, 30 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Centrally, the Tevatron main ring is setup for protons and anti-protons while the ILC is an electron-positron machine. The main problem with trying to put electrons through a hadron machine is accelerated electron emit enormous amounts of cyclotron radiation which the tevatron machine isn't able to handle, particularly in it's early booster stages. The ILC is linear in order to avoid cyclotron radiation. Electrons also require different equipment to focus the beams. The ILC is a very well developed design with no need for a big injector. Pulu (talk) 18:36, 25 July 2018 (UTC)

I heard fermilab was closing


 * Haven't heard anything like that myself... HEL 16:50, 30 September 2006 (UTC)
 * No we are not closing. (I work there) Pulu (talk) 18:36, 25 July 2018 (UTC)

i heard something interesting
i heard people are paid to live underground at the fermilab for 20 years. like an apocolypse thing. any truth to that? Spencerk 22:53, 15 May 2006 (UTC)
 * I highly doubt that Fermilab has the time and resource to carry out a 20 years confinement experiment in its basement. The speculation sounds more like a typical paranoid conspiracy theory.  But I have no authority on the subject.  Jumping cheese 23:46, 15 May 2006 (UTC)
 * I'm pretty sure that is not true. I have worked here (fermilab (CDF)) for the last three summers.  In fact, the first two of those three summers, I lived on site, in the Fermilab Village, so I spent nearly 24 hours every day on the lab grounds.  I've never heard of anybody living underground here.  Also, nobody says "The Fermilab".  It is just "Fermilab", or "Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory".-- Jon Wilson
 * It's not true at all. (I've worked at Fermilab and my father is a physicist there.) --Strait 15:14, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
 * The bison have been provided with an underground swimming pool and interfaith room, that could be the source of the rumor. 178.38.105.134 (talk) 13:46, 27 February 2015 (UTC)

Nope, 1000% false. (I work there) Pulu (talk) 18:31, 25 July 2018 (UTC)

Wilson Hall Photograph
I'm visiting Fermilab tomorrow and will try to get a free photo to replace the copyrighted one. Hopefully I'll remember. Besselfunctions

So I got a couple of pictures. Besselfunctions 01:42, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

Couple Questions
Why are there "moats" near the rings? Where do they get the power for the ring (which plant) and how much power does it use? --207.154.79.131 06:45, 24 March 2007 (UTC)


 * The moat-looking arrangements are cooling ponds that circulate/dissipate waste heat from the beam-confinement magnet systems. The site seems to derive its energy from the main ComEd grid, but I am as yet unaware of its rate of consumption. I will research as to whether or not there is a specific generating location, along with anything else I can dig up, and update it here. MrWarMage 23:01, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

Collision energies of Tevatron and the CERN LHC?
Hey! The CERN section says this: "0.45 TeV per beam, vs. 0.98"

..but then it goes on to say:

This particle accelerator [the LHC] will have a 27km circumference, and will accelerate particles to a total collision energy of 14 TeV, 7 times the energy at Fermilab.

So does the Tevatron have a collision energy of 0.98 or 2 TeV now? Wootini 14:03, 6 June 2007 (UTC)
 * The Tevatron system en toto is ~2TeV, the sum of both the matter and anti-matter beams mass-energies, each at ~0.98TeV. I haven't been on the LHC site in a while so I will presume thereby that they are stating each particle stream will have a mass-energy of ~7TeV at full power. Keep in mind that's going to be at least another two to three years after the LHC first starts due to shakedown and lower-range testing. Could you please drop a link or cite in here so I can be lazy about it? ;) MrWarMage 15:46, 9 June 2007 (UTC)


 * From 1987 to 2001, the Tevatron had 0.90 TeV on each beam, so a center-of-mass collision energy of 1.8 TeV. In 2001 until turning off in 2011, they used 0.98 TeV on each beam or a center-of-mass collision energy of 1.96 TeV. The LHC was designed to have a center-of-mass collision energy of 14 TeV (7 TeV per beam). Currently they are operating at 13 TeV center-of-mass collision energy. Pulu (talk) 18:43, 25 July 2018 (UTC)

should be categorized like other lab pages
for instance, the los alamos national lab has the nice table on the right of the page, stating the number of employees, date of founding etc, its just nice and more organized that way i guess.

Weston, IL?
Weston is hardly "near" Batavia, IL. This fact needs to be reconciled. Sah293 22:31, 30 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Well, the Weston that the Fermilab site now occupies doesn't actually exist anymore. The Weston down in McLean County is a different town. The article on the former Weston, Illinois (as in the defunct town) had incorrect information based on the other Weston (which is apparently in McLean County). At some point, someone should make a disambiguation page and a new page for the still-existing Weston down in McLean. The Parsnip! 23:24, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

Wrong
The next step is the linear accelerator (or Linac), which accelerates the particles to 400 million electron volts (MeV), or about 70% of the speed of light.

gamma = 1 + 400e6/511e3 beta = sqrt(1-1/gamma^2) = 0.9999991860774434 —Preceding unsigned comment added by Dont think twice (talk • contribs) 05:47, 12 October 2007 (UTC)


 * They're protons, not electrons. A kinetic energy of 400 MeV gives beta≈0.71. Mjamja (talk) 11:40, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

The Letter
I am removing the section entitled "The Letter," which was added last month. I'm sure that Fermilab receives many letters every day. This one happened to be written by someone who wanted to write in code for whatever reason. Unless I have missed something, the incident is not noteworthy and is therefore not worthy of inclusion in this article. --DavidGC (talk) 19:29, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

Unclear sentence
I can't make sense of the following sentence in the 'Current Developments' section under 'Cern': It is expected that the initial center-of-mass of 10 TeV, with full energy to follow in 2009. It feels like a word is missing somewhere or something. I'm not sure what it's trying to say so I can't correct it. -Crazyjimbo (talk) 18:10, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Homeland Security Advisory System ?
This sounds bogus to me: ...Fermilab is host to many cultural events... when the Homeland Security Advisory System permits. Why in the world would this have anything to do with Homeland Security? The advisory system is just that silly, useless color-coded thing that doesn't give anyone useful information about anything. This is a physics lab, not an airport or a military base. If nobody has a citation for this fact, I think it's probably incorrect and should be removed.--207.233.86.166 (talk) 16:06, 25 November 2009 (UTC)
 * The public is only allowed onto the grounds of Fermilab under certain color codes. So the text seems plausible to me. &mdash; goethean &#2384; 15:57, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

reference to LHC collisions
I'm just updating the sentence that refers to the power of the collisions at the LHC as being scheduled to reach 3.5 TeV in 2010, as this has now occurred.Master z0b (talk) 00:24, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

positron accelerator system explanation
Where can I find an explanation as to how the accelerator's traveling magnetic field is able to accelerate the protons in one direction and the negative antiprotons in the opposite direction.WFPM (talk) 14:09, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

The Holometer
Fermilab is building something to test whether or not the universe is a giant hologram. Check it out here: http://holometer.fnal.gov/ http://www.physorg.com/news/2010-10-holometer-universe-hologram.html —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.194.190.179 (talk) 14:35, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

No mention of KTeV experiment that reported CP violation
No mention here of the KTeV experiment (expt E799-II?) that first reported direct CP violation in kaon decays. - Rod57 (talk) 12:25, 10 September 2016 (UTC)


 * It would be very nice to include this, along with quite a number of discoveries and developments made at Fermilab. http://50.fnal.gov/fifty-years-of-discoveries-and-innovations/ Pulu (talk) 18:53, 25 July 2018 (UTC)

No mention of the discovery of the bottom quark or tau neutrino
The bottom quark and tau neutrino were discovered at Fermilab. This should be not only be mentioned, but have their own sections. For that matter, MOST of the major scientific achievements and activities of the lab are not mentioned. For the shallowest summary of those, see [http://50.fnal.gov/fifty-years-of-discoveries-and-innovations/ here. ] Pulu (talk) 18:53, 25 July 2018 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page has been nominated for deletion
The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page has been nominated for deletion: Participate in the deletion discussion at the. —Community Tech bot (talk) 23:49, 4 December 2019 (UTC)
 * Fermilab.jpg

A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for speedy deletion
The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for speedy deletion: You can see the reason for deletion at the file description page linked above. —Community Tech bot (talk) 23:35, 9 January 2022 (UTC)
 * USA Illinois location map.svg


 * I can't find any record of the supposed deletion request. The file history shows some changes that claimed it was a copyright logo, which have been reverted.--03:39, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

"5 vacuum vessel"
In the article, what is "The first segment has a 5 vacuum vessel ..."? Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 07:56, 12 May 2022 (UTC)
 * The reference with the presention from Donna Kubik suggests that
 * The first segment has a 5 vacuum vessel for drift tubes, operating at 201 MHz. The second stage has seven side-coupled cavities, operating at 805 MHz.
 * should be replaced by
 * The first segment has five drift tube cavities, operating at 201 MHz. The second stage has seven side-coupled cavities, operating at 805 MHz.
 * --Kallichore (talk) 18:33, 12 May 2022 (UTC)


 * Thanks, I made that change. Is a drift tube the same as a Klystron? Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 03:36, 13 May 2022 (UTC)