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.
Fermilab employees Jemila Adetunji and Joel Kofron arrive on site excited to welcome thousands of visitors.
A section of the CMS detector at CERN is displayed on the side of a Fermilab building to provide visitors with a sense of scale. Fermilab is the US hub for CMS and helped design, fabricate and install the detector, as well as analyze the data.
Dozens of Chicagoland STEM institutions brought knowledge, hands-on activities and goodies to the STEM fair.
Those who visited the technical campus learned how Fermilab develops coils for powerful magnets used in particle physics research.
At the Cryomodule Test Facility, guests saw cryomodules (the building blocks of particle accelerators) and a cryoplant (that creates supercold fluids). They also got a taste of a cleanroom.
Tents erected for the celebration provided welcome shade from which to view the campus, including the tall Tractricious sculpture.
Hundreds of young scientists experimented with hands-on demos at the Lederman Science Center.
Guests pause for a photo in the tents outside of the Lederman Science Center.
Jerry Zimmerman, aka Mr. Freeze, gave four cool performances of his popular cryogenic show throughout the day, to the delight of audiences in Ramsey Auditorium.
The coolest place on site was in the underground tunnel that houses the Muon Delivery Ring and beamline for the Muon g-2 and Mu2e experiments.
The Muon g-2 experimenters added a few cartoon characters to help explain their science.
Visitors look down into the future home of the ICARUS detector, a neutrino hunter born in Italy that was recently refurbished at CERN.
Part of the volunteer team at the neutrino campus breaks from sharing science for an exuberant group photo.
