Lab Libs

One of the   perks of being an astrophysicist is getting to   a telescope. For the Dark Energy Survey, we use a telescope at the   Observatory high in the mountains of  . The elevation means there are far fewer   than usual, so it’s a(n)   place to observe the night sky. We take pictures of millions of   and   floating out in space, which give us an idea of how the universe  . To capture these images, we use a 570-megapixel camera, which is about the size of a  . Compare that to the roughly 20-megapixel camera on the   you probably have in your pocket right now! We’ll use all of these   images to better understand dark energy, a mysterious   that is   the universe apart faster and faster. Whoever figures that puzzle out will probably win a(n)  .

Building your own neutrino experiment is easy. First assemble a team of    . Then design a particle detector full of  , the latest technology in   neutrinos, also known as   particles. Fun fact: if a   explodes somewhere in the Milky Way, your experiment should be able to see it! You’ll want to build your detector   underground, to block out all the   coming from the atmosphere. Consider building it inside of a  . Hire some   to carefully   the detector in its new home. Connect all the   coming out of the detector to the data acquisition system, chill everything to precisely negative   degrees Fahrenheit, and wait for the   to roll in! Make sure to give your project a   name, like the “Grand     Experiment.”

Dr.   was a very   physicist. Her team of   graduate student(s) and   Nobel Prize winner(s) had been searching for the   quark, the final piece of the Standard Model puzzle, for what seemed like forever:  . Dr.   rubbed her   together in anticipation. Other scientists had already   five kinds, aka flavors, of quarks: the   quark, the   quark, the   quark, the   quark, and the   quark. The results today would reveal whether they had succeeded at finding the most   of the quarks. Hundreds of people had built a/n   particle accelerator at the   National Accelerator Laboratory in  , and it had   millions of particle collisions. Dr.   and the team   looked at the data and saw what they had hoped for: a  ! The final quark had been found! The team celebrated by   a bottle of   and having a toast: “Hip, hip,  !”

Did you know that billions of tiny   are created in the core of the sun as a product of nuclear fusion every  ? They   in all directions, including towards Earth, but are so   that they pass right through matter—even entire  —without ever being noticed.   need to use extra-  detectors to catch even a few. These detectors are often filled with liquid  . We want to learn as much as we can about their properties, such as how   they are and how often they  . This will help us understand how they   with other   in the Standard Model of   and could even explain the role they played in the   of the entire  .

Early today, a group of   at CERN’s Control Center turned off the     Collider. The collider was   used to discover the elusive   boson. Over the past three years, collisions produced more than     of   to be studied in the quest to understand the   and   that make up everything around us. CERN’s accelerators will be stopped for about   for major renovations and upgrades. For example, technicians will replace   of the collider’s  , crucial components that accelerate and   subatomic particles. They’ll also install new  , which will enable the collider to   at higher energies than ever before!