Massive particle storage ring to begin 3,200-mile trek on Saturday
Note: Fermilab and Brookhaven Lab staff will be covering the move with photos and video, and will make all materials available to news organizations. Contact Andre Salles (asalles@fnal.gov) or Peter Genzer (genzer@bnl.gov). Up-to-date information will be posted at muon-g-2.fnal.gov/bigmove.
How do you move a 50-foot-wide, circular electromagnet from Long Island to the Chicago suburbs in one piece without flexing or twisting it? Very, very carefully.
On Saturday, June 22, the electromagnet will begin its 3,200-mile land and sea voyage to its new home at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Illinois, where it will become the centerpiece of a new experiment called Muon g-2 (pronounced gee-minus-two).
This experiment will study the properties of muons, subatomic particles that live only 2.2 millionths of a second, and its results could open the door to new realms of particle physics.
The historic g-2 experiment at Brookhaven Lab concluded in 2001, but not before finding a tantalizing greater-than-three-sigma (standard deviation) discrepancy between the theoretical calculation and the measurement of the "magnetic moment" of muon g-2. This elegant experiment was a precise test of the validity of the Standard Model—our reigning understanding of how three of the known four forces (gravity excluded) govern the structure and behavior of all elementary particles that make up our universe. The level necessary for claiming a new discovery is five sigma, but reaching that level of confidence would have required much more data than we were able to collect here at Brookhaven. This experiment will now get a new life as part of Fermilab's Muon Campus, allowing Brookhaven and Fermilab scientists—along with 100-plus researchers from China, England, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Russia, and more than 15 U.S. institutions—to take another shot at finding physics beyond the Standard Model. For the new muon g-2 experiment, the entire 650-ton storage ring used in the Brookhaven experiment will be transported to Fermilab, where the collaboration will take advantage of the existing accelerator complex. Fermilab's reconfigured Antiproton Source will deliver an intense beam of muons to g-2, allowing researchers to collect the data they need to reach that five-sigma level of discovery.
The magnet was built at the DOE's Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York in the 1990s, where it was used in a similar experiment. The ring is constructed of aluminum and steel, with superconducting coils inside, and it cannot be taken apart or twisted more than a few millimeters without irreparably damaging those coils.
Transporting the electromagnet from Brookhaven to Fermilab will cost 10 times less than building a new one. The magnet will remain inert, exhibiting no magnetic properties, until it is plugged in at Fermilab.
The Muon g-2 team has devised a plan that involves loading the ring onto a specially prepared barge and bringing it down the East Coast, around the tip of Florida and up the Mississippi, Illinois, and Des Plaines rivers to Illinois. Once it arrives in late July, the ring will be attached to a truck built just for the move and driven to Fermilab, traveling over two consecutive nights and using rolling roadblocks to temporarily close sections of the roads.
Road closings and detours will be coordinated with public safety agencies in both states.
The trip begins Saturday morning, as the ring will be moved across the Brookhaven site to a staging area just inside its main gate. On the evening of Sunday, June 23, it will be driven down the William Floyd Parkway to the Smith Point Marina, where it will be loaded onto the barge.
Members of the public can follow along on the ring's journey on a new web page launched this week at muon-g-2.fnal.gov/bigmove. The page includes a GPS-powered map that will trace the path of the ring in real time, and a blog that will be updated with images, videos and the most current information about the move.
Public events are also in the planning stages to celebrate the ring's arrival at Fermilab.
"It's not often our neighbors get a ringside seat for something this complex and interesting," said Chris Polly, Muon g-2 project manager for Fermilab. "We're excited to get this move underway."
For more information on the experiment, visit muon-g-2.fnal.gov.
Fermilab is America's premier national laboratory for particle physics research. A U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science laboratory, Fermilab is located near Chicago, Illinois, and operated under contract by the Fermi Research Alliance, LLC. Visit Fermilab's website at www.fnal.gov and follow us on Twitter at @FermilabToday.
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