Brad's FRIB

Longest. Blog. Ever!

Asked what he thought of being blogged/taped as he prepared- Bad Bad Brad Sherrill said he was more concerned about bloggers harping on mistakes or jokes in the talk. How prescient. The live audience seems to be more of a threat than the bloggers, though. I wonder which jokes didn’t make the cut.

Here’s his plan: lay out the beam production mechanisms, discuss some fundamental symmetries you can test with those beams, and then round out the 45 minutes with societal applications and benefits from rare isotope facilities. This is not 100% FRIB, as I thought, but more a picture of where FRIB fits in the (modern) RIB facilities.
This is ambitious and a nice complement for a program that is riddled with a good number of speakers who haven’t fully embraced the spirit of reaching beyond our own special little corner in science.

15.05 Baha points out Brad’s tongue slip of identifying the protons as neutrons.
15.08 9 is less than 8. Ernst finds the new nucleus: Z=7 flourine. Congratulations, Ernst. But you don’t get to name it. Ernstinated toothpaste just sounds weird.
15.11 List of production mechanisms. Promises resources for the wiki. I must recruit him. Cha-ching for the Rare Isotope Facilities working group! The trick is to get all these promises made during the talks to be realized in the next week before people stop working on it.
15.12 List of good mechanisms for producing nuclei close to stability. (p,n), (p,nn) Also, fusion evaporation has large cross section. Good to know.
15.13 Fusion-fission!! 238U+12C fizzes to heavier isotopes—laser acceleration in the future. Good for getting nuclear physics on the movie screen. Lasers are camera friendly. How does one get the job of being a consultant for Hollywood?? That is never covered in physics career services….
15.15 Brad is doing the math in his head for 3He(58Ni,60Zn)n real quick. It quickly washes over his face that (58Ni,60Zn)n is ok. I enjoyed some of the finer details of production concerns for different types of nuclei. Having spent so much time at the NSCL, I have had a hard time wrapping my head around what happens at other types of facilities.
15.18 On to higher energy production mechanisms.
15.20 Spallation (wiki commons file shown) Ooo- video! It is just like fragmentation, except you get the beam nucleus from the target instead of the primary beam.
15.22 Shows range of isotopes you get for given processes. Nice to see what you will get at what facilities without having to look up a table. It is not quite second nature to me yet. But soon we will have the wiki. Hendrik will see to that.
15. 25 Explains abrasion and oblation terms and fills in details of fragmentation process. I hate abrasion/oblation talks and all their terminology. Brad confirms my suspicion that those talks employ unnecessary mystery about what they are doing.
15.28 He is behind schedule. I am worried he won’t get through all three sections. He is still in the first! One too many production curves, Brad.
15.29 Q_g term name- historical, and now I want to know the story. Probably a let down. Q_g is binding energy between beam and fragment (ME(beam) – ME(frag)). Production cross sections tell you about how well mass models are doing. Ah. That excited a few people in the room.
15.32 He’s screwed. No way he has enough time. I’ve never seen this before from Brad.
15.35 In 1966, 1000 know isotopes. Now, around 3000.
15.38 He’s referencing my jargon page. Must steal his pictures for jaron page in the name of my (non)working group page.
15.39 Reminds us the efficiencies are an important factor in getting a good intensity beam. True dat.
15.43 Good map. Going to steal that, too. This talk is more reconnaissance for me….
15.45 Holy crap—2E13 particles from U fission!!!
15.46 LISE++ advertisement.
15.49 Rap- You can thank Zach Meisel. YouTube making its entrance into the physics conference world. Fun at Brad’s expense. Good sport.
15.50 Still sorry he didn’t get to symmetries and societal impact as promised. Turns out- Brad is a tease.

Overtime: So when do you think FRIB will see first light? Brad: 2018. I’ll be starting a pool on how far behind schedule they ultimately go. Cash only.

15.54 Dying to AutoTune Brad Sherrill’s talk. Any suggestions on the music? Would be better if there were video of Brad talking.

15.55 Questions- finally. Discussion includes high vs. low energy experiment, the 6-12 months dead time between the NSCL turning off and FRIB turning on; a new hire Oscar at the NSCL to look at correlations in Beta decay for new physics in the weak interactions; doing EDM measurements an order of magnitude beyond TRIUMF. Baha wants the latter in writing: Done.