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Fermilab employee shows experiments to guests at Fermilab open house
Fermilab photo archives

Fermilab on display

The national laboratory opened usually inaccessible areas of its campus to thousands of visitors to celebrate 50 years of discovery.

 
 
 

 

 
 
 

Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory’s yearlong 50th anniversary celebration culminated on Saturday with an Open House that drew thousands of visitors despite the unseasonable heat.

On display were areas of the lab not normally open to guests, including neutrino and muon experiments, a portion of the accelerator complex, lab spaces and magnet and accelerator fabrication and testing areas, to name a few. There were also live links to labs around the world, including CERN, a mountaintop observatory in Chile, and the mile-deep Sanford Underground Research Facility that will house the international neutrino experiment, DUNE.

But it wasn’t all physics. In addition to hands-on demos and a STEM fair, visitors could also learn about Fermilab’s art and history, walk the prairie trails or hang out with the ever-popular bison. In all, some 10,000 visitors got to go behind-the-scenes at Fermilab, shuttled around on 80 buses and welcomed by 900 Fermilab workers eager to explain their roles at the lab. Below, see a few of the photos captured as Fermilab celebrated 50 years of discovery.