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Secretary Peña visits Argonne-East

Peña spent the morning and early afternoon touring the site with Argonne Director Dean Eastman; Art Sussman, the University of Chicago's vice president for Argonne; and Cherri Langenfeld, manager of DOE's Chicago Operations Office.

After meeting with local DOE employees, Peña toured the Advanced Photon Source and discussed APS research with several collaborative access team members.

Next, the secretary visited Argonne's Advanced Diesel Engine Research Facility, a collaborative effort between Argonne and the Electro-Motive Division of General Motors and learned of several Argonne advanced transportation technology projects. Peña then toured the CP-5 research reactor, where innovative decontamination and decommissioning methods are being developed and tested.

Over lunch, Peña discussed the lab's educational programs with undergraduate and graduate students, their mentors and high school and middle school teachers. The students told the secretary how their research experience at Argonne will assist and influence them in their career plans.

Peña told the students and teachers of his strong interest in finding ways to use the national labs to interest young children in science and to continue to make the laboratories' resources available for hands-on research by students and teachers. He also emphasized the importance of using the Internet to train teachers and to boost the science literacy of the nation's children.

After lunch Peña visited Argonne's Cave Automatic Virtual Environment (CAVE) where he participated in two demonstrations of virtual-reality techniques to visualize scientific and engineering data. He also saw a demonstration of how scientists can control microscopes and other instruments in other parts of the country without leaving their laboratories.

Public comment ends on EBR-II shutdown

Public meetings were held in Idaho Falls on June 3 and in Washington D.C. on June 6. Comments received during these meetings supported maintaining EBR-II in a semi-shutdown condition for possible future use.

The draft environmental assessment for the shutdown of EBR-II analyzed the potential environmental consequences of placing the EBR-II reactor in an industrial and radiologically safe shutdown condition. In this condition, the molten sodium coolant would be removed from the reactor, the reactor vessels and piping sealed and the reactor filled with an inert gas.

Upon resolution of any submitted comments, DOE's Chicago Operations Office will decide whether a more detailed environmental impact statement should be written. If no environmental impact statement is required, DOE is expected to issue a "finding of no siginificant impact" and an order for Argonne to proceed with shutting down EBR-II.

Volunteers needed for picnic

Employees are needed to help run games and the hayride, sell tickets and greet picnickers. Volunteers can help out at part of all of the picnic. For more information, call Fred Onesto (APO) at ext. 2-5260.

Argonne, DOE and University of Chicago employees are invited to the annual get-together. Admission is free.

This year's picnic will feature a bungee run, Ferris wheel, big slide, "Red Baron" plane ride moonwalk, pony ride and a petting zoo. Other attractions will include carnival-style games, hayrack rides, bingo and a country-music band.

Food and beverages will be available for purchase.

Survey will seek employee opinions

The survey will give employees the opportunity to provide Laboratory Director Dean Eastman and lab management feedback on their jobs, work place and management.

Deadline for returning the survey is Friday, July 11. Responses will be anonymous, and results will be provided through managers and supervisors.

ATLAS: sorting millions of signals
to answer some heavy questions

As Europe's Large Hadron Collider powers up in 2005, protons will collide inside ATLAS, a 5,000-ton particle instrument (which should not be confused with Argonne's ATLAS, the Argonne Tandem Linear Accelerator System in Argonne-East's building 203). The shower of particles streaming from the collision point will radiate into the "scintillating tile calorimeter," one of several specialized detectors inside ATLAS, which was designed and built by scientists at Argonne and other institutions around the world.

Argonne also has a role in turning the calorimeter's faint flashes of light into data that physicists can study -- and interpreting that data.

The calorimeter signal -- pulses of electricity that record the passage of a particle through the detector -- is relayed to a computer system that sorts the signals from thousands of tiles. The system then creates a three-dimensional picture of the particles passing through the detector.

Since there may be tens of thousands of signals from each collision, with nearly one billion collisions occurring each second, the computer must be powerful enough to decide which events can be ignored and which are worthy of further study. Argonne physicists are designing part of that computer system.

The "Level 2 Trigger" is being designed by a team of Argonne physicists -- including Robert Blair, John Dawson Ed May and Jim Schlereth -- working in close cooperation with scientists from Michigan State University. The $5 million sysem will sift through some 40 million signals each second from the ATLAS detector, decide which are worth studying, and pass the remaining hundred or so along to a third-stage computer system.

Heavy questions

While the hardware and software are being prepared, theoretical physicists like Steve Mrenna (HEP) are anticipating the first data from ATLAS, due sometime after 2005.

"We know that what we have cannot be the full story," Mrenna said. "We really don't understand what mass is." The "Standard Model" of particle physics -- the current working theory of how the universe works at the subatomic level -- has been successful in all of its predictions, Mrenna said. However, the origin of mass remains a mystery.

Using data from ATLAS, physicists will try to solve the puzzle by studying W and Z particles, which carry the "weak" nuclear force responsible for certain nuclear phenomena, such as some kinds of radioactive decay (see below).

Mrenna likened these force carriers to balls thrown by one skater to another on an ice rink. The skaters feel the force of the ball when they throw or catch it. How far they can throw the ball -- or the range of the force -- depends upon its weight. An observer sees the effect of the force by observing how the skaters recoil from the throw or the catch.

Sometimes particles interact by exchanging massless particles, like skaters tossing ping-pong balls to each other. For example, protons and neutrons are each made of a trio of "quarks," which constantly exchange other particles called "gluons." These massless gluons bind the quarks together -- hence the gluons' whimsical name. This nuclear binding, or "strong" force (see below) ultimately keeps the atomic nucleus in one piece -- despite the fact that protons, all having the same positive charge, want to repel each other.

But some subatomic skaters seem to be heaving heavier objects. In one type of radioactive decay, one of the quarks inside a neutron can emit a "W" particle. At about 100 times the mass of a proton, the W is the subatomic equivalent of a bowling ball; so the weak force is short-range and occurs only rarely.

"Understanding why Ws and Zs get mass may tell us how everything in nature gets mass," Mrenna said.

The Standard Model suggests that the W and Z particles get mass by interacting with a "Higgs field" that may pervade all space. Mrenna likened the field to cheesecake, with the Ws and Zs taking generous bites of the cheescake and gaining mass. Photons stay fast and light by eating none.

In some interactions, however, bits of cheesecake may be left over. The excess may appear as a new particle, the as-yet-unobserved Higgs particle. The energetic Swiss collider should be able to produce a large number Higgs particles, which should provide clues to the origin of mass and may reveal even more exotic creatures.

Ultimately, physicists hope to be able to mathematically unify all four forces, a condition thought to have last existed when the universe was a mere fraction of a second old.

-- Dave Jacqué

The four forces:

Electromagnetism -- Familiar to anyone who turns on a light or holds a magnet under a sheet of paper covered with iron filings. Carrier is the photon (the massless light particle).

Strong -- Binds atomic nuclei together. Strongest of the four forces, but only at extremely short ranges (one ten-billionth of a centimenter) Carrier: massless gluons

Weak -- Many orders of magnitude less intense than the strong force. Responsible for some forms of radioactive decay and neutrino emission. Carrier: W and Z particles.

Running Club to take part in distance classic

Events will include a 20K run at 7:45 a.m.; a 5K run at 7:55 a.m.; and a 5M walk at 8 a.m. Entry fees are $18, $16, and $16, respectively.

Argonne running club members will receive $5 off their entry fees, and students will get $5 off plus club membership. Participants should fill out an entry form and a check payable to Argonne Running Club and send them to team captain, Aziz Uras (RE) in Building 208.

Call 2-5847 for more information and a copy of the entry form. Carpooling may be available on race day.

Pacesetter Awards

ES, PFS employees
install new diesel facility

Applied research performed in this facility will provide information necessary for the design of a new generation of high-efficiency diesel locomotive power systems. Although the installation project presented a large number of novel and complex problems, the six-month effort was finished ahead of schedule.

Honored were Michael Andrews, Roger Cole, Clarence Clark, Matthew Lagessie, Ramesh Poola, Raj Sekar, Sherman Smith and Zhihong Sun (all ES), Ron Ghilardi (PFS), and Charles Horton and Richard Lill of EMD.

Service awards for June include:

40 Years

Donald R. Colby (ECT-CS) and William Kettman (ET).

35 Years

Robert G. Barr (ECT-EE), Oscar D. Despe (ASD), Robert E. Holtz (RE), Gareld R. Larsen (ED), Hope D. Rihel (TD-DES), V. Svirtun (ASD).

30 Years

Janet B. Anderson (ASD), Gene Argast (ED), Ira Bornstein (OTD), James M. Boyle (TD), Yanglai Cho (OTD-APS), Clarence E. Clard (ASD), Kenneth W. Dritz (DIS), Larry S. Forgeon (OD), Ray E. Larsh (OD-PS), Beverly J. Woelfer (OTD-ERA), Elon Lee Wood (ED).

25 Years

Benigno T. Banez (RE), Michael H. Derbidge (OTD-ERA), Ely M. Gelbard (RA), Dale D. Koelling (MSD), George A. McLennan (RE), Patricia A. Moonier (PFS-PMO), George F. Vasilopulos (IPNS), James L. Woodring (ESH).

20 Years

Joan S. Brunsvold (OPA), John J. Devenney (PFS-IN), Joseph W. Falout (PHY), L.A. Franek (ES), Diana J. Hurst (IPD-MIS), Edgar E. Morris (RA), Kenneth V. Sidorowicz (ASD).

15 Years

Roger L. Cooper (OD), Ahmed M. Hassanein (ET), Lynnie D. Johnson (PFS-DR), Chun-Keung Loong (IPNS), Vanessa A. Mendez (CMT-AC), Yen-Cheng Pan (RE).

10 Years

Juan C. Campuzano (MSD), Cheryl A. Casper (OD-PS), Mark C. Hash (CMT), Angela M. McKay (OPA), Robert W. Peters (ES), Gary K. Pilon (PFS-CU), Deborah L. Vervack (CHM), Richard C. Vondrasek (PHY), Gayle E. Woloschak (CMB), Mark Woyna (DIS), Charles E. Zimmerman (ECT-COM).

5 Years

Deborah Busch (ER), Stephen Butala (ESH), Kevin P. Carney (ED), Steven Daley (PHY), Bruce Herdt (RE), Mary E. Hoff (OCF-PRO), John Hoyt (ASD), Judd Johnson (EMO), Dennis D. Keiser Jr. (ED), Jeffery McGhee (ESH-HP), Ruth A. Reck (ER), Michael Rohder (ASD), Mark Sreniawski (ESH-HP), Martha Teitlus (CMT), Raymond Wysocki (PFS-US), Raymond Ziegler (MSD).

Deadline Information

Story ideas, comments and suggestions are welcome. The Argonne News office is in Building 201, room 2Q-02 (OPA-201). The fax number is ext. 2-5274. Send E-mail to Argonne News editor Dave Jacque.

Seminar listings: Send by inter-office mail to Evie Fagan, Building 201, room 2U-09 (OPA-201). Fax to ext. 2-5274, or send by E-mail.

Classified ads: Please limit ads to 25 words. Send by inter-office mail to Evelyn Fagan, Building 201, room 2U-09 (OPA-201). A drop box is located at the Argonne News office.

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