Friday Flyer - October 16, 2015

Spotlight on Fermilab/U Chicago: The QuarkNet center at Fermilab consists of teachers and students from the vicinity of the Lab and those centered at the University of Chicago. It is one of our more "Astro" groups, in that the mentor, Chris Stoughton, is a Fermilab particle physicist (E769) turned astrophysicist. This past summer, they had a CMS data workshop but also a large research program. One of the premier efforts was building their own QuarkNet Radio Telescope. In all, they had two mentor teachers, eight high school students (seven juniors and one sophomore), 12 physics teachers, and one lead scientist this summer working on a wide variety of projects. 

News from QuarkNet Central: The QuarkNet IT staff has been doodling around with maps and detector geometries . . . and, well, not all of our geometries are accurate. Some QuarkNet schools appear to be in oceans or remote parts of the earth. Please look at your last upload to check and, if needed, correct the latitude and longitude of your detector. Look at the altitude as well; we do not want to claim astronaut wings unless we've really been up there.

Physics Experiment Roundup: At SURF in South Dakota and Gran Sasso in Italy, detectors are looking for evidence of a different form of dark matter that Notre Dame physicists think could come in matter-antimatter varieties as well as add mass to cause supernova explosions. Speaking of things we cannot yet detect out there, the hunt for gravitational waves goes on.

Resources: Another new out-of-this-world topic: neutrino astronomy

Just for Fun: Physics Today reviews The Martian. 

QuarkNet Staff Teachers:
Ken Cecire: kcecire@nd.edu
Bob Peterson: rspete@fnal.gov
Shane Wood: swood5@nd.edu