Fermilab at 50: the June 2017 issue of Physics World is now out

By Matin Durrani

With America’s iconic Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) celebrating its 50th anniversary this month, check out the June 2017 issue of Physics World magazine, which is now live in the Physics World app for mobile and desktop.

Fermilab mades its name with the Tevatron proton–antiproton collider but neutrinos hold the key to the lab’s future, as Ben Still from Queen Mary University of London makes clear in a feature on the physics of these elusive particles.

You can also enjoy a cracking review of Tommaso Dorigo’s new warts-and-all account of life in the CDF collaboration at Fermilab, while Seyda Ipek from the lab pops up in Philip Ball’s homage to the blackboard – which you can also read on physicsworld.com.

Plus don’t miss this month’s Lateral Thoughts, which reveals how one physicist working in a Scottish call centre ended up chatting to Enrico Fermi’s daughter-in-law about her TV.

Remember that if you’re a member of the Institute of Physics, you can read Physics World magazine every month via our digital apps for iOS, Android and Web browsers.

For the record, here’s a rundown of what else is in the issue.

• US science spared budget axe – Despite initial fears of significant funding cuts, America’s 2017 budget largely maintains support for research. But as Peter Gwynne reports, the relief may only be temporary and funding for science may be slashed next year instead

• Building bridges with the west – Michael Banks talks to theoretical condensed-matter physicist Fuchun Zhang, director of the new Kavli Institute of Theoretical Sciences in Beijing, about the challenges of attracting top-class talent to China

• Fermilab at 50 – The iconic US lab celebrates its 50th anniversary this month

• Of minds and marches – Robert P Crease reveals his ambivalence about the recent marches for science – and why he went on one in the end

• Delivering on a quantum promise – With the European Commission investing €1bn over 10 years in quantum technologies, Karl Svozil warns against overselling many of the initiative’s longer-term goals

• Nature’s little linchpins – From the hunt for the violation of charge–parity symmetry
to the quest to find Majorana particles, neutrinos may hold the key to moving physics beyond the Standard Model, as Ben Still explains

• Local realism is dead, long live local realism? – Rebecca Holmes describes groundbreaking experiments that finally closed the long-standing loopholes in Bell tests, suggesting the end of the road for local realism. But could local realism yet live on?

• The power of the blackboard – Despite us living in an era of PowerPoint, smartboards
and digital projection, the traditional blackboard still retains an aura and usefulness for physicists that more advanced technologies can’t match, as Philip Ball finds

• Clash of the particle people – Gavin Hesketh reviews Anomaly!: Collider Physics and the Quest for New Phenomena at Fermilab by Tommaso Dorigo

• How to stop the science saboteurs – Tara Shears reviews Not A Scientist:
How Politicians Mistake, Misrepresent and Utterly Mangle Science by Dave Levitan

• The need for speed – Diagnostics physicist Lorraine Bobb explains how a summer placement at Diamond Light Source helped her make an evidence-based decision about her career path

• Once a physicist – meet Philip Earis, who is editor-in-chief of Joule, a new sustainable-energy journal, and recently returned to the UK after three years living in India, where he founded “Project Light” to bring solar power to off-grid communities

• Talking Fermi and broken televisions – Steve Cohen on the unexpected path that took him to a job in a call centre