LBNE in the News
Bob Wilson elected co-spokesperson for LBNE
Fermilab Today, Dec 12, 2012
Wilson was elected to the position of co-spokesperson for the Long-Baseline Neutrino Experiment in November. He will replace outgoing spokesperson Bob Svoboda of UC Davis and will join Brookhaven National Laboratory's Milind Diwan in leading the LBNE collaboration.
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DOE grants CD-1 approval to LBNE project
Fermilab Today, Dec 11, 2012
The U.S. Department of Energy on Monday granted Critical Decision 1 approval to the first phase of LBNE, which includes construction of a beamline at Fermilab and a near-surface far detector at the Sanford Lab in Lead, S.D.
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LBNE review at Fermilab and US-PRC meeting at Daya Bay
Fermilab Today, Nov 7, 2012
What was perhaps the laboratory's most important event last week – the successful Department of Energy CD-1 review of LBNE – became a demonstration of valiant efforts by researchers and project reviewers alike... The review recommendation was for approval of CD-1, which hopefully will be granted by DOE before the end of the year. This is a necessary milestone for the project...
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East Coasters brave Hurricane Sandy to keep neutrino project on schedule
Symmetry, Nov 5, 2012
Hurricane Sandy hit the night before an important project review, but scientists, engineers and project personnel didn't let that stand in their way.
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This week's HEPAP meeting
Fermilab Today, Aug 29, 2012
This was the first HEPAP meeting after the Long-Baseline Neutrino Experiment was reconfigured to comply with DOE's financial guidelines. The discovery (by Daya Bay) of a large theta-13 parameter in neutrino mixing ... has opened the gate for important future advances in neutrino physics and removed the major risk for LBNE ... The afternoon of the first day was devoted entirely to the topic of LBNE ...
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Proposed neutrino experiment bounces back, ready to move on
Symmetrybreaking, Aug 10, 2012
A few months ago, the future seemed uncertain for what could be the world's most powerful neutrino experiment. Now, thanks to a new phased construction plan, the proposed Long Baseline Neutrino Experiment is back on track and ready to advance to the next stage of the U.S. Department of Energy approval process...
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A path forward for LBNE
Fermilab Today, July 10 2012
DOE Office of Science Director Bill Brinkman has written me (Pier Oddone, Director of Fermilab) a letter supporting the reconfiguration of LBNE and requesting us to proceed to CD-1. The CD-1 review will take place at the end of October, followed by the formal approval of CD-1 towards the end of this calendar year....
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Symposium looks back at Tevatron's life at Fermilab
Daily Herald, June 12 2012
At a symposium Monday reviewing the impact of the now-shuttered Tevatron particle accelerator, Fermilab director Pier Oddone discussed what's next for the laboratory... A working group organized by Oddone will propose, in a report to the Department of Energy's Office of Science, that the DOE build a long beam line to shoot neutrinos to a detector in the former Homestake gold mine in Lead, S.D., and a 10-ton detector in that mine, in the first of three phases of constructing the experiment, he said...
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Advancing Underground Science at South Dakota's Sanford Lab
Berkeley Lab News Center, June 7 2012
The Sanford Underground Research Facility officially opened its Davis Campus on May 30 by introducing more than 60 visitors to the sparkling new laboratories... NSF support is expected to continue for individual experiments. Meanwhile DOE will pursue major projects such as Fermilab's Long Baseline Neutrino Experiment, proposed to begin with a large liquid argon detector at Homestake and a new accelerator beamline at Fermilab, 800 miles away...
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LBNE builds 35-ton
prototype cryostat
Fermilab Today, June 7 2012
...The LBNE project team is currently constructing a 35-ton-capacity prototype cryostat at PPD's PC-4 facility with the primary purpose of verifying that the high purity levels achieved last year in the Liquid Argon Purity Demonstrator, LAPD, are reproducible in a non-evacuated cryostat of the type planned for the LBNE detector....
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American Physics Dreams Deferred
New York Times, May 21 2012
...The science office in the Energy Department actually got an increase in the budget released by President Obama in February, but the money went to more applied research, into areas like energy and scientific computing.
Only last month, Congress added money to the (LBNE) neutrino experiment, although not enough to get the whole project back on track, said Katie Yurkewicz, Fermilab's spokeswoman...
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Neutrino project changes focus
Nature, May 2 2012
...Last week, the working group met with the wider particle-physics community to hash through ways to cut costs while retaining the project's three main science goals: determining the hierarchy of masses of the three known types of neutrino; establishing whether neutrinos disobey 'charge-parity symmetry', which might explain why the Universe contains more matter than antimatter; and searching for proton decay....
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LBNE reconfiguration workshop spring board for ideas from physics community
Fermilab Today, Apr. 27 2012
Scientists and community members packed One West on April 25 and 26 for the Long-Baseline Neutrino Experiment reconfiguration workshop... Workshop participants helped assess the best options to do the most science for the least amount of money...
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DOE pulls back from major Sanford Lab experiment
Black Hills Pioneer, Apr. 13 2012
Officials at the Department of Energy have declined funding for the current plans of the Long Baseline Neutrino Experiment, the largest detector planned for the Sanford Lab. Scientists with the Long Baseline Neutrino Experiment have been asked to take a phased approach at planning the experiment that carried a price tag of more than $1.5 billion...
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Physicists mobilize to rescue U.S. neutrino experiment
symmetrybreaking, Apr. 4 2012
Neutrino physicists in the U.S. have begun to regroup after a disappointing setback last week, when they learned the Department of Energy would not support the budget of a major proposed experiment. The silver lining, as they see it, is that they have the chance to reevaluate their plans and find a path forward. DOE officials asked Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory to study ways to make the costs of the Long Baseline Neutrino Experiment more manageable, such as dividing its construction into stages or working with an existing neutrino beam...
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Long-Baseline Neutrino Experiment
Fermilab Today, Apr. 3 2012
We have started a vigorous effort to answer Office of Science Director Bill Brinkman's charge to Fermilab to find a path forward to reach the goals of the Long-Baseline Neutrino Experiment in a phased approach. A steering committee led by Deputy Director Young-Kee Kim (pictured at left), with many of the LBNE stakeholders as members, will guide the study. The steering committee will have two working groups: the physics working group, led by Mel Shochet of the University of Chicago, and the engineering/cost working group, led by Mark Reichanadter of SLAC...
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US physicists fight to save neutrino experiment
Nature, Mar. 26 2012
The future of a pioneering project to study the lightest matter particles known was thrown into jeopardy last week, when officials at the US Department of Energy (DOE) announced that they were reluctant to fund the Long-Baseline Neutrino Experiment (LBNE) in its current form... The stakes are high for advocates of the LNBE who see it as a chance for the United States to maintain a place at the leading edge of particle physics, even as the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has made CERN, Europe's high-energy physics laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland, the field's undisputed hub...
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Fermilab told to rein in planned neutrino experiment
physicsworld.com, Mar. 26 2012
Physicists in the US working on a major new experiment to study the properties of neutrinos have suffered a major setback with the announcement that the US Department of Energy (DOE) will not fund their current plan. Known as the Long-Baseline Neutrino Experiment (LBNE), it would involve creating a beam of neutrinos at Fermilab and detecting them 1300 km away in a new detector to be built deep underground in South Dakota's Homestake mine. But writing to Fermilab director Pier Oddone last week (pictured at left), William Brinkman, who is director of the DOE's Office of Science, says that the DOE "cannot support the LBNE project as it is currently configured"...
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DOE decision on LBNE
... DOE has decided that it cannot support the LBNE project in its current form in the current budget climate. The Office of Science remains very supportive of the experiment's scientific goals, however, and has charged Fermilab with investigating options for achieving these goals that fit within the more restrictive budgets predicted in future years...
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At DOE, Body Blows to Fusion, Nuclear Physics, and Particle Physics
ScienceInsider, Feb. 13 2012
... the budget cuts research and development for what would be Fermilab's flagship project in the next decade. Researchers hope to build a gigantic underground particle detector called the Long-Baseline Neutrino Experiment ....
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President's Budget Request
Fermilab Today, Feb. 14 2012
... Where do the cuts fall on the Fermilab program? The first is a decrease in the funds for the Long Baseline Neutrino Experiment and related support for the Homestake site...
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3Qs: Physicists push for underground testing facility
news@Northeastern, Jan. 31 2012
Northeastern professor Pran Nath talks about why he and more than 40 colleagues are urging the U.S. Department of Energy to fund an underground facility for particle physics research.
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Life after Tevatron: Fermilab Still Kicking Even Though It is No Longer Top Gun
Scientific American, Jan. 31 2012
"We have 10 accelerators here on site," says Fermilab physicist Steve Holmes, with the merest hint of irritation. "We turned one of them off, okay?" ... New and ongoing projects at Fermilab, ... depend less on energy and more on intensity-producing beams with copious amounts of particles to look for rare decays or interactions..
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US physicists call for underground neutrino facility
Nature newsblog, Jan. 26 2012
When the US National Science Board nixed plans for an underground lab in 2010, multiple potential experiments were left homeless... Now, 40 leading theoretical physicists, including three Nobel Prize winners, have written to the US Department of Energy (DOE) urging it build an underground facility to study subatomic neutrinos ...
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Next step for the Long-Baseline Neutrino Experiment
Fermilab Today, Jan. 24 2012
...By far the toughest decision has been the selection of the technology for the detector ... The decision is to build LBNE with liquid-argon TPC technology ...
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A good close to the year
Fermilab Today, Dec. 20 2011
...The final important event from last week was ... a recommendation from the executive committee of the LBNE collaboration regarding how the experiment should be done.
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First physics experiments soon to move into former Homestake mine
symmetrybreaking, Dec. 15 2011
Construction of a 12,000-square-foot research campus a mile underground is nearing completion in the Black Hills of South Dakota, and scientists will begin to move the first physics experiments underground this spring.
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LBNE coming into focus
Fermilab Today, Nov. 15, 2011
As LBNE moves closer to its CD-1 review this coming spring, the project team has steadily honed its conceptual design to reduce cost while maintaining necessary functionality and safety features.
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Sanford Lab Hires New Director
Black Hills Pioneer, Sep. 13, 2011
The Sanford Underground Laboratory at Homestake, in Lead South Dakota, has hired a new Director.
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LBNE and the FY12 Budget Request
Fermilab Today, Sep. 13, 2011
Budget requests for fiscal year 2012 include LBNE and Sanford Underground Laboratory at Homestake in Lead, South Dakota.
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Pop Goes the Photomultiplier Tube
Brookhaven bits&bytes Feb. 8, 2011, WIRED Feb. 9, 2011
To understand how to strengthen the design of photomultiplier tubes, Brookhaven physicists and engineers submerge them in water and watch them implode.
Collaborative Relationships Key to Success
Fermilab Today, Oct. 29, 2010
As LBNE approaches its Critical Decision-1 review early next year, the experiment collaborators have come together to develop a complete conceptual design and prepare documentation for the review.
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Recovery Act Funding at Work
Fermilab Today, Oct. 22, 2010
Recovery Act funding gives the LBNE project team a chance to grow.
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LBNE collaboration meeting
Sept. 12-15, 2010
The last LBNE collaboration meeting took place at Fermilab from Sunday, Sept. 12 to Wednesday, Sept. 15, 2010.
Agenda and more information
LBNE collaboration meeting
Fermilab Today, May 25-28, 2010
An LBNE collaboration meeting took place in Deadwood, South Dakota from Tuesday, May 25 to Friday, May 28, 2010.
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Testing target materials
@brookhaven TODAY, March 2010
LBNE scientists are using the Brookhaven Linac Isotope Producer (BLIP) to test various target materials to determine which is best to generate LBNE's neutrino beam.
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Ground-breaking neutrino R&D gets government boost
symmetrybreaking, Jan. 14, 2010
The Department of Energy has given the LBNE project its first-stage approval, known as Critical Decision-0.
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Drillers sample soil, rock at proposed neutrino site
Fermilab Today, Dec. 11, 2009
Engineers have begun to collect geological information for the design and the construction of tunnels and caverns of the LBNE project on the Fermilab site.
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NSF grant for neutrino detector
UC Davis News, Oct. 13, 2009
The LBNE Science Collaboration has received a $4.4 million NSF grant for the design of the world's largest neutrino detector.
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