Every year, postdocs in high-energy physics at University College London are asked to give a short, light-hearted talk about their research for the holidays.

Louie Corpe, a UCL scientist on the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider, says he had heard about some “fairly elaborate” presentations from previous years, including one given in the form of a Christmas carol.

“I’m a little competitive by nature,” he wrote in an email. “That’s where the idea of the Xmas jumper presentation came about.”

He converted two plots and a Feynman diagram into cross-stitch patterns for his talk on the topic of “exotic searches for long-lived particles,” which he gave wearing a sweater embroidered with an ATLAS event display—the handiwork of his fiancée, Emma.

“In particular, we are looking for displaced jets which decay in the ATLAS HCAL,” he wrote. “The jumper I was wearing described the topology we were looking for… The results of the analysis are not public yet, but I doubt anyone would be able to extract any useful information from my cross-stitched plot.”

Although he scored compliments for his outfit on social media, Corpe was not the winner of this year’s event. That honor went to postdoc Cheryl Patrick, who wrote and performed a five-song musical about her neutrinoless double beta decay experiment, SuperNEMO, with her PhD students singing back-up.

There are plenty of songs about snow, decking the halls and holiday cheer—but where are the festive songs of science? For those singers who prefer curling up by the Bunsen burner (or a fiery ball of quark-gluon plasma) instead of the fireplace, Symmetry presents a new carol for your repertoire: “The 12 Days of Physicsmas.”

Lyrics to sing along:

On the 12th day of Physicsmas

My true love sent to me:

Twelve theorists thinking,

Eleven students coding,

Ten protons smashing,

Nine muons spinning,

Eight gluons gluing,

Seven beamlines beaming,

Six quarks combining,

Five sigma results,

Four Nobel Prizes,

Three neutrinos,

Two neutron stars,

And a grand unified theory.

Happy holidays from the Symmetry team!

Around the world, there’s an ecosystem of large particle accelerators where physicists gather to study the most intricate details of matter. 

These accelerators are engineering marvels. From planning to construction to operation to retirement, their lifespans stretch across decades. 

But to get the most out of their investments of talent and funding, laboratories planning such huge projects have to think even longer-term: What could these projects become in their next lives? 

The following examples show how some of the world’s big physics machines have evolved to stay at the forefront of science and technology.

Same tunnel, new collisions

Before CERN research center in Geneva, Switzerland, had its Large Hadron Collider, it had the Large Electron-Positron Collider. LEP was the largest electron-positron collider ever built, occupying a nearly 17-mile circular tunnel dug beneath the border of Switzerland and France. The tunnel took three years to completely excavate and build. 

The first particle beam traveled around the LEP circular collider in 1989. Long before then, the international group of CERN physicists and engineers were already thinking about what CERN’s next machine could be. 

“People were saying, ‘Well, if we do build LEP, then we should make it compatible with the [then-proposed] Large Hadron Collider,’” says James Gillies, a senior communications advisor and member of the strategic planning and evaluation unit at CERN. “If you want to have a future facility, you often have to engage the people who just finished designing one machine to start thinking about the next one.”

LEP’s designers chose an energy for the collider that would mass-produce Z bosons, fundamental particles discovered by earlier experiments at CERN. The LHC would be a step up from LEP, reaching higher energies that scientists hoped could produce the Higgs boson. In the 1960s, theorists proposed the Higgs as a way to explain the origin of the mass of elementary particles. And the new machine to look for it could be built in the same 17-mile tunnel excavated for LEP.  

Engineers began working on the LHC while LEP was still running. The new machine required enlargements to underground areas—it needed bigger detectors and new experimental halls. 

“That was challenging because these caverns are huge. As they were being excavated, the pressure on the LEP tunnel was reduced and the LEP beamline needed realignment,” Gillies says. “So you constantly had to realign the collider for experiments as you were digging.” 

After LEP reached its highest energy in 2000, it was switched off. The tunnel remained the same, says Gillies, but there were many other changes. Only one of the LEP detectors, DELPHI, remains underground at CERN as a visitors’ point. 

In 2012, LHC scientists announced the discovery of the long-sought Higgs boson. The LHC is planned to continue running until at least 2035, gradually increasing the intensity of its particle collisions. The research and development into the accelerator’s successor is already happening. The possibilities include a higher energy LHC, a compact linear collider or an even larger circular collider.

High-powered science

Decades before the LHC came into existence, a suburb of Chicago was home to the most powerful collider in the world: the Tevatron. A series of accelerators at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory boosted protons and antiprotons to nearly the speed of light. In the final, 4-mile Tevatron ring, the particles reached record energy levels, and more than 1000 superconducting magnets steered them into collisions. Physicists used the Tevatron to make the first direct measurement of the tau neutrino and to discover the top quark, the last observed lepton and quark, respectively, in the Standard Model.

The Tevatron shut down in 2011 after the LHC came up to speed, but the rest of Fermilab’s accelerator infrastructure was still hard at work powering research in particle physics—particularly on the abundant, mysterious and difficult-to-detect neutrino. 

Starting in 1999, a brand-new, 2-mile circular accelerator called the Main Injector was added to the Fermilab complex to increase the number of Tevatron particle collisions tenfold. It was joined in its tunnel by the Recycler, a permanent magnet ring that stored and cooled antiprotons. 

But before the Main Injector was even completed, scientists had identified a second purpose: producing powerful beams of neutrinos for experiments in Illinois and 500 miles away in Minnesota. By 2005, the proton beam circulating in the Main Injector was doing double duty: sending ever-more-intense beams to the Tevatron collider and smashing into a target to produce neutrinos. Following the shutdown of the Tevatron, the Recycler itself was recycled to increase the proton beam power for neutrino research.

“I’m still amazed at how we are able to use the Recycler. It can be difficult to transition if a machine wasn’t originally built for that purpose,” says Ioanis Kourbanis, the head of the Main Injector department at Fermilab. 

Fermilab’s high-energy neutrino beam is already the most intense in the world, but the laboratory plans to enhance it with future improvements to the Main Injector and the Recycler, and to build a brand-new neutrino beamline. 

Neutrinos almost never interact with matter, so they can pass straight through the Earth on their way to detectors onsite and others several hundred miles away. Scientists hope to learn more about neutrinos and their possible role in shaping our early universe.

The new beamline will be part of the Long-Baseline Neutrino Facility, which will send neutrinos 800 miles underground to the massive, mile-deep detectors of the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment. Scientists from around the world will use the DUNE data to answer questions about neutrinos, thanks to the repurposed pieces of the Fermilab accelerator complex.

A monster accelerator

When physicists first came up with the idea to build a two-mile linear accelerator at what is now called SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, managed by Stanford University, they called it "Project M” for “Monster.” Engineers began building it from hand-drawn designs. Once completed, the machine was able to accelerate electrons to near the speed of light, producing its first particle beam in May 1966. 

The accelerator’s scientific purpose has gone through several iterations of particle physics experiments over the decades, from fixed-target experiments to the Stanford Linear Collider (the only electron-positron linear collider ever built) to an injector for a circular collider, the Positron-Electron Project. 

These experiments led to the discovery that protons are made of quarks, the first evidence that the charm quark existed (through observations of the J/psi particle, co-discovered with researchers at MIT) and the discovery of the tau lepton. 

In 2009, the lab used the accelerator as the backbone for a different type of science machine—an X-ray free-electron laser, the Linac Coherent Light Source. 

“Looking around, SLAC was the only place in the world with a linear accelerator capable of driving a free-electron laser,” says Claudio Pellegrini, a distinguished professor emeritus of physics at the University of California, Los Angeles and a visiting scientist and consulting professor at SLAC. Pellegrini first proposed the idea to transform SLAC’s linear accelerator.

The new machine, a DOE Office of Science user facility, would be the world’s first laser of its kind that could produce extremely bright hard X-rays, the high-energy X-rays that let scientists take snapshots of atoms and molecules. 

“Much of the physics and many of the tools learned and developed during the operation of the Stanford Linear Collider were directly applicable to the free electron laser,” says Lia Merminga, head of the accelerator directorate at SLAC. “This was a big factor in the LCLS being commissioned in record time. Without the Stanford Linear Collider experience, this significant body of work would have to be reinvented and reproduced almost from scratch.”

Little about the accelerator itself needed to change. But to create a free-electron laser, scientists needed to design a new part: an electron gun, a device that generates electrons to be injected into the accelerator. A collaboration of several national labs and UCLA created a new type of electron gun for LCLS, while other national labs helped build undulators, a series of magnets that would wiggle the electrons to create X-rays.

LCLS used only the last third of SLAC’s original linear accelerator. In part of the remaining section, scientists are developing plasma wakefield and other new particle acceleration techniques.

For the X-ray laser’s next iteration, LCLS-II, scientists are aiming for an even brighter laser that will fire 1 million pulses per second, allowing them to observe rare and exceptionally transient events. 

To do this, they will need to replace the original copper structures with superconducting technology. The technology is derived from designs for a large International Linear Collider proposed to be built in Japan.

“I’m in awe of the foresight of the original builders of SLAC’s linear accelerator,” Merminga adds. “We’ve been able to do so much with this machine, and the end is not yet in sight.” 

August’s Great American Eclipse brought at least a partial eclipse to most of the United States, and 14 states experienced totality, a phenomenon that occurs when the sun is completely eclipsed by the moon. Eight Illinois high school students and five of their teachers traveled into the zone of totality to witness the two to three breathtaking minutes when the moon completely blocked the sun.

However, unlike most sky-watchers on August 21, these students did more than just marvel at the eclipse: They studied it, hoping to learn something about the effects of the sun going dark. Their mission? To measure whether the eclipse changed the number of detected cosmic rays—particles from space that rain down on Earth—which could tell us something about where these cosmic rays come from.

“This was a real scientific question high school students have the opportunity to answer,” says Nate Unterman, an emeritus teacher at Glenbrook North High School. “The students came up with a very elegant, scientific hypothesis: The cosmic ray flux will change during an eclipse.”

Unterman and another Glenbrook North teacher, Tony Valsamis, came up with the idea to study cosmic rays during the eclipse at an American Association of Physics Teachers conference, and they knew where to look for researchers: The school’s cosmic ray club.

Students in the school’s cosmic ray club had already been studying the behavior of cosmic rays, which reach Earth’s surface as muons—particles that are similar to electrons—using small-scale detectors provided by QuarkNet, a program designed to give students and teachers opportunities to get involved with high-energy physics research.

Unterman and Valsamis recognized these same detectors could be used during the eclipse to see whether the number of muons reaching Earth would change—something no study has measured from the ground.

“I got a call from Mr. Unterman while he was at the AAPT conference telling me about this idea to study the eclipse,” says Clarissa Carr, a Glenbrook North student and participant in the cosmic ray club. “I was immediately on board.”

The path to totality 

Four days before the eclipse, the research team, which consisted of students and teachers from Glenbrook North and Ida Crown Jewish Academy, made a five-hour trek from the Chicago area to Jefferson College in Hillsboro, Missouri.

“I drove a school bus with three students in it,” Valsamis says. “The rest of it was full of detectors, mounts and electronics.”

Immediately after arriving at Jefferson College, which would serve as home base for the research team, the students hurried about unloading equipment, setting up detectors on their mounts and connecting wires. Setup took a whole day and then some, partially because of a faulty detector.

“When one of our detectors had a faulty power cable, we all had to gather around the detector and take it apart,” says Carr, who was responsible for log-keeping during the experiment as well as setup. “We managed to put it back together and get it working—it was memorable but stressful!”

After setup, the detectors could begin collecting baseline data to be compared with data from the eclipse. The researchers had nothing left to do but wait for totality. To pass the time, students visited a local farmer’s market, played volleyball and theorized about what the eclipse might be like.

“We were all hypothesizing about what we would see during the eclipse,” says Jacob Rosenberg, a Glenbrook North student. “None of us had a clue what to expect, but we were all excited.”

The big moment  

When the day of the eclipse finally arrived, crowds of people joined the research team at Jefferson College, eager to experience the United States’ first total solar eclipse in decades. As excitement filled the air, the research team made last minute adjustments to their detectors, making sure everything would be in working order during the short window of totality. With detectors pointed at the sky and eclipse glasses at the ready, the team was prepared. 

In the minutes leading up to totality, spectators at Jefferson College peered up through their glasses, waiting until the moon completely covered the sun. 

“The total solar eclipse was incredible to look at,” Rosenberg recalls. “There was a 360-degree sunset, and we could hear the noises of nature change as people ‘ooh'ed and ‘ahh'ed.”

 Valsamis came equipped to capture photos of the eclipse, amassing over 700 pictures. 

“None of my photos mimic the experience or explain how beautiful it was,” Valsamis says. “It was like the best picture but better, and being surrounded by enthusiastic people was infectious.”

The aftermath 

In the months since it happened, the eclipse may have become a passing memory to most, but it’s stayed at the forefront of the research team’s mind. Students from Ida Crown and Glenbrook North meet at least once a month to collaborate on data analysis.

“Students had a unique opportunity to do this research almost on their own," Valsamis says. “It was incredible to see the students learn to collaborate.”

While not all the data has been analyzed yet—and some potentially interesting data points have required more intense analysis—students have already benefited from the experience of conducting research.

“I’ve learned from this experiment the importance of being knowledgeable about what you’re doing, but being open to learning more,” Carr says. “I’ve also learned a lot about teamwork and community-building.”

In 2018, Carr and Rosenberg will present some of the results from the solar eclipse study at the annual American Association of Physics Teachers conference. Both students are excited about the opportunity—although understandably a little nervous.

“It’s a little intimidating to present in front of so many smart people, but I’m not too worried," Rosenberg says. “I remind myself that anyone, no matter age or experience, can always contribute to research and learning more about the universe.”

In 2017, we were treated to books about gravitational waves; unsung women critical to modern astronomy; the neutrino detector at the South Pole; and astrophysics both fast and slow.

Ripples in Spacetime: Einstein, Gravitational Waves, and the Future of Astronomy, by Govert Schilling

Einstein’s final prediction took the longest to confirm: Gravitational waves were finally detected in September of 2015, a century after the publication of his paper on general relativity. The discovery brought with it the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics, shared by Rainer Weiss, Barry Barish and Kip Thorne. Govert Schilling, a science writer based in the Netherlands, places the discovery in the historical context of a 40-year search. Schilling is a captivating story-teller who creates a one-on-one conversation with his readers.

The Glass Universe: How the Ladies of the Harvard Observatory Took the Measure of the Stars, by Dava Sobel 

Dava Sobel (Longitude, The Planets, Galileo’s Daughter) shines a light on the irreplaceable contributions of the women “computers” at the Harvard Observatory. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, these women exhaustively cataloged millions of stars from glass photographic plates (hence, The Glass Universe). One of them, Henrietta Swan Leavitt, concluded that the brightest variable stars had the longest periods, establishing a measuring standard across space still used today.

Astrophysics for People in a Hurry, by Neil deGrasse Tyson

As soon as it was published, Astrophysics for People in a Hurry hit No. 1 on the New York Times best-seller list. In a TV interview, author Neil deGrasse Tyson characterized the reception as “an affirmation that people are interested in science.” Learn the laws of the universe with an attitude: As Tyson says, “Yes, Einstein was a badass.”

Universal: A Guide to the Cosmos, by Brian Cox and Jeff Forshaw

Cosmology and astrophysics for those who are not in a hurry—and who enjoy a challenge. This beautiful book excels on three levels: the striking graphics, the accessible introductions escalating into detailed discussions, and the accompanying case studies exhibiting the scientific method (such as “What is Light?”). Co-authors Brian Cox and Jeff Forshaw (Why Does E=mc²?) are physics professors at the University of Manchester; Cox is also Royal Society Professor for Public Engagement in Science.

A Big Bang in a Little Room: The Quest to Create New Universes, by Zeeya Merali

Creating a new universe at a particle accelerator might sound like science fiction, or just plain preposterous—until author Zeeya Merali places the idea in the context of other feats of modern cosmology. With a PhD in theoretical physics and cosmology from Brown University, Merali takes on the topic with knowledge and humor in conversation with leaders at the intersection of cosmology and particle physics.

Three titles from the invaluable Oxford University Press A Very Short Introduction series:

Gravity: A Very Short Introduction, by Timothy Clifton

Timothy Clifton, a gravitational specialist at Queen Mary University of London, starts with the everyday experiences of gravity and advances to its effects on the universe and scientists’ efforts to link it with quantum mechanics. He also discusses the impact of the discovery of gravitational waves.

Telescopes: A Very Short Introduction, by Geoffrey Cottrell

Geoffrey Cottrell, an astrophysicist at Oxford University, explores the principles, history and major discoveries of different types of telescopes: simple optical, radio, X-ray, gamma ray and space-based. He also looks to the next generation of telescopes, such as the ALMA radio telescope array in the Atacama desert of Chile.

The Jazz of Physics: The Secret Link Between Music and the Structure of the Universe, by Stephon Alexander

Pythagoras, Kepler, Newton and Einstein all pondered the link between music and physics. The great saxophonist John Coltrane incorporated physics and geometry into his work. “In our attempts to reveal new vistas in our understanding, we often must embrace an irrational, illogical process, sometimes fraught with mistakes and improvisational thinking,” writes physicist and jazz saxophonist Stephon Alexander.

The Telescope in the Ice: Inventing a New Astronomy at the South Pole, by Mark Bowen 

Tracking a unique particle takes a unique particle detector. Meet IceCube: a cubic kilometer of “diamond-clear” ice more than a mile below the surface at the South Pole. The world’s largest particle detector, IceCube recorded the first extra-terrestrial high-energy neutrinos in 2010. Mark Bowen (Censoring Science, Thin Ice) narrates the story of the people and science behind the pursuit of the inscrutable particle. Bowen, a “recovering physicist,” journeyed to the Amundsen South Pole research station as a part of his research for the book.

Magnitude: The Scale of the Universe, by Megan Watzke and Kimberly Arcand

How big is big? How small is small? Kimberly Arcand and Megan Watzky, colleagues at NASA’s Chandra X-Ray Observatory, take an illustrated journey from subatomic particles to the most massive galaxies in the universe, from the speed of grass growing to the speed of light. They explore mass, time and temperature; speed and acceleration; and energy, pressure and sound. Watzke and Arcand’s other collaborations include Light: The Visible Spectrum and Beyond and Coloring the Universe: An Insider’s Look at Making Spectacular Images of Space.

Mass : The Quest to Understand Matter From Greek Atoms to Quantum Fields, by Jim Baggott

Even in the aftermath of uncovering the Higgs particle in 2012, Jim Baggott (The Quantum Story: A History in 40 Moments, others) points to our incomplete understanding of matter. The foundations of the universe, he says, are “built of ghosts and phantoms of a peculiar quantum kind.” Each chapter concludes with “Five things we learned,” such as Einstein’s dictum, via John A. Wheeler: “Matter tells space-time how to curve; space-time tells matter how to move.” Mass is worth some extra effort to keep up.

The Quantum Labyrinth: How Richard Feynman and John Wheeler Revolutionized Time and Reality, by Paul Halpern

Bongo-playing Richard Feynman and buttoned-down John A. Wheeler began their unlikely connection in 1939 when Feynman was Wheeler’s teaching assistant at Princeton. Wheeler’s ideas about the universe read almost like science fiction: black holes, worm holes and portals to the future and the past. Feynman won the Nobel Prize for his work in quantum electrodynamics. He depicted quantum reality as a function of alternative possibilities. Paul Halpern (Einstein’s Dice and Schrödinger’s Cat, Edge of the Universe) shows how these two formed their own alternate reality.

Completing a PhD in physics is hard. It’s even harder when you’re one of the first to do it not just at your university, but at any university in your entire state.

That’s exactly the situation Wenzhao Wei and Dan Rederth found themselves in earlier this year, when completing their doctorates at the University of South Dakota and the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology, respectively. Wei and Rederth are graduates of a joint program between the two institutions. 

Wei found out just a few weeks before going in front of a committee at USD to defend her thesis. A couple of students ahead of her had dropped out of the PhD program, leaving her suddenly at the head of the pack.

“When I found out, I was very nervous,” Wei says. “When you’re the first, you don’t have any examples to follow, you don’t know how to prepare your defense, and you can’t get experience from other people who have already done it.”

She recalls running between as many professors and committee members as she could for advice. “I did a lot of checking with them and asking questions. I had no idea what they would be expecting from the first PhD student.”

Despite her wariness, and with some significant publications in the field as the first author, Dr. Wei’s defense was successful, and she is now working as a postdoc at the University of South Dakota.

Rederth knew he was the first at SDSMT but wasn’t aware it was a first in South Dakota until after he had handed in his dissertation and completed his defense. “The president of the school told me I was the first in South Dakota after I finished,” he says. “But I wasn’t aware that Wenzhao had also completed her PhD at the same time.

“Being the first, I was not prepared for the level of questioning I received during my defense – it went much deeper into physics than just my research. Together with Wenzhao, being the first in South Dakota really is a feather in the cap to something which took years of hard work to achieve.”

Different paths to physics

Rederth started on his path to physics research at a young age. “The most satisfying aspect of my PhD research dates back to my childhood,” he says. “I was always intrigued by magnetism and the mystery of how it works, so it was fascinating to do my research.”

His work involved studying strange magnetic quantum effects that arise when certain particles are confined in special materials. A computer program he developed to model the effects could help bring new technologies into electronics.

For Wei’s success, you might expect she had also always made a beeline to research, but physics was actually a late calling for her. At Central China Normal University, she had studied computer science and only switched to physics at master’s level.

“In high school, I remember liking physics, but I ended up choosing computer science,” Wei says. “Then at college, I had some friends who did physics who were part of the same clubs as me, and they kept talking about really interesting things. I found I was becoming less interested in computer science and more interested in physics, so I switched.”

Wei’s thesis, entitled “Advanced germanium detectors for rare event physics searches,” and her current research involve developing technologies for new kinds of particle physics detectors—ones that use germanium, a metal-like element similar to tin and silicon. Such detectors could be used for future neutrino and dark matter experiments.

South Dakota is already home to a growing suite of physics experiments located a mile beneath the surface in the Sanford Underground Research Facility. It was in part a result of these experiments being located in the same state that Wei’s pioneering PhD program came about. USD has been involved with several experiments at SURF, among them the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment, which will study neutrinos in a beam sent from Fermilab 1300 kilometers away.

“DUNE and SURF have been a vehicle to move the physics PhD program at USD forward,” says Dongming Mei, Wei’s doctoral advisor at USD. “With the progress of DUNE, future PhD students from USD will be exposed to thousands of world-class scientists and engineers.”

Post-doctorate, Wei is now continuing the research she began during her thesis. But with a twist.

“For my PhD, I did lots of computer simulations of dark matter interactions, so I spent a lot of time stuck at a computer,” Wei says. “Now I’m actually able to get hands-on with the  germanium crystals we grow here at USD and test them for things like their electrical properties.”

So where next for South Dakota’s first locally certified doctors of physics?

“I want to stay in physics for the long-term,” Wei says. “I taught some physics to undergraduates during my PhD and really loved it, so I’m hoping to be a researcher and lecturer one day.”

Rederth, too, wants to help inspire the next generation. “I want to stay in the Black Hills area to help raise science and math proficiency in the local schools. I’ve been a judge for the local science fair and would like to become more involved,” he says.

Perhaps some of their future students will go on to join the list of South Dakota’s physics doctorates, started by their trailblazing teachers.

Calling all amateur radio operators: Fermilab employees are taking to the air waves.

From December 2-17, the Fermilab Amateur Radio Club, whose membership includes laboratory employees, former employees and guests, is commemorating the lab’s 50^th birthday with two weeks of ham radio activity. Tune in at the right frequency at the right time, and you could communicate directly with a member of the Fermilab community to ask your burning questions. How does an accelerator bring particles to near light speed? When did the universe begin? How did Fermilab begin?

You just might hear a friendly voice—or receive a Morse code message—at the other end.

The club has established a call sign for this special two-week event: W9F. They will operate daily on all frequencies and modes—voice, Morse code and others. The anticipated frequencies of operation are 14.260, 14.340, 7.250 and 7.275 MHz. There may also be operations on 7.040, 10.130 and 14.040.

“Amateur radio is the original electronic social media,” says Fermilab engineering physicist Kermit Carlson. “It’s practiced as an avocation without pay or pecuniary interest by people worldwide.”

According to ARRL, the national association for amateur radio, there are more than 800,000 amateur radio operators in the United States and roughly 2 million worldwide—in virtually every country.

“Amateur radio is the original electronic social media.”

“Ham radio is a hobby practiced by everyone from school kids to doctors,” Carlson says. “It’s a wide cross section of society.”

The Fermilab club has no radio station, so the approximately 10 on-air hosts will use their personal home stations to establish radio contacts. Harry Przekop, a retired medical physicist who conducted his graduate studies at Fermilab, came up with the idea for the event, and he will be one of the on-air hosts.

It’s a fitting way to celebrate a laboratory known for its forefront science. The world’s amateur radio operators tend to be technologically astute folks, club members say. And the wonder of channeling nature is often what draws people to using amateur radio.

“I remember when I was a little kid sitting in the dark in my grandparents’ living room listening to the BBC,” says Fermilab engineer David Peterson. “How could these signals come from thousands of miles away and get picked up on a little piece of wire in the tree outside my grandparents’ living room and come out the speaker of my radio?”

The technical side of operating amateur radio dovetailed with Peterson’s career fairly well.

“Electromagnetic fields — it’s all kind of the same technology,” Peterson says.

Once the two-week, on-air celebration is over, the hosts will make available a commemorative QSL card, requests for which can be sent to ARRL via email. 

So tune in, say hi, and be a part of Fermilab’s 50th-anniversary on-air celebration. Talk to an on-air expert to learn what Fermilab does and the discoveries it’s made. Do it from the comfort of your ham radio setup. And maybe collect a QSL card for your collection.

The sixth annual Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics has been awarded to an experiment that revolutionized cosmology and mapped the history of our universe. The $3 million prize was given to the science team and five leaders who worked on the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe, which investigated matter, the Big Bang and the early conditions of our universe.

 “WMAP surveyed the patterns of the oldest light, and we used the laws of physics to deduce from these patterns answers to our questions,” said Chuck Bennett, the principal investigator of WMAP. He received the award along with Gary Hinshaw, Norman Jarosik, Lyman Page and David Spergel. “Science has let us extend our knowledge of the universe to far beyond our physical reach.”

The Breakthrough Prizes, which are also awarded in life sciences and mathematics, celebrate both the science itself and the work done by scientists. The award was founded by Sergey Brin, Anne Wojcicki, Jack Ma, Cathy Zhang, Yuri and Julia Milner, Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan with the goal of inspiring more people to pursue scientific endeavors.

WMAP, a joint NASA and Princeton University project that ran from 2001 to 2010, has many claims to fame. Scientists have used the spacecraft’s data to determine the age of the universe (13.77 billion years old) and pinpoint when stars first began to shine (about 400 million years after the Big Bang). WMAP results also revealed the density of matter and the surprising makeup of our universe: roughly 71 percent dark energy, 25 percent dark matter and 4 percent visible matter.

From its home one million miles from Earth, WMAP precisely measured a form of light left over from the Big Bang: the cosmic microwave background (CMB). Researchers assembled this data into a “baby picture” of our universe when it was a mere 375,000 years old. WMAP observations support the theory of inflation—that a rapid period of expansion just after the Big Bang led to fluctuations in the distribution of matter, eventually leading to the formation of galaxies.

Scientists still hope to unlock more secrets of the universe using the CMB, and various experiments, such as BICEP3 and the South Pole Telescope, are already running to address these cosmological questions. One thing scientists would love to find? A twist on a hot topic: primordial gravitational waves left over from the Big Bang.

“There is still much we do not understand, such as the first moments of the universe,” Bennett said. “So there will be new breakthroughs in the future.”