The Ever-Changing Georgia Coast: In Conversation with President Emeritus G. Wayne Clough

Neutrinos are among the most elusive particles in the universe and understanding them may be the key to solving some of the biggest cosmic mysteries. For decades, scientists have been building massive detectors and using intense neutrino sources to capture these ghostly particles. 

The Short-Baseline Near Detector is the newest liquid-argon neutrino detector at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. The SBND collaboration published their first results on Oct. 30 in arXiv and submitted to Physical Review Letters for review and publication, marking a critical demonstration of the powerful tool scientists now have at their disposal.

This result focuses on understanding how neutrinos interact with argon atoms and lays critical groundwork needed to prepare for the Fermilab-hosted Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment at the Long-Baseline Neutrino Facility.

“This is a huge milestone for the collaboration,” said Afroditi Papadopoulou, a physicist at Georgia Institute of Technology and member of the SBND collaboration. “This result is going to be a stepping stone for all the analyses that will follow from this point on.”

Fermilab Newsroom

When scientists exposed bumblebees to a modern insecticide designed to kill crop pests, the bees did not die any faster than unexposed bees. On the face of it, this seems like the best possible outcome.

However, just because a pesticide does not kill a bee right away does not mean the insect is unharmed. A new study from the Georgia Institute of Technology looked at common eastern bumblebees exposed to sulfoxaflor.

While the bees survived, their ovaries shrank and their gene activity drastically changed. Soon, they almost completely stopped laying eggs. Experts say this proves that just counting dead bees misses the massive, silent damage that chemicals leave behind.

Earth.com