Shipping A 50-Foot Magnet Across The U.S., For Physics

From New York, around Florida and up the Mississippi, all to study a subatomic particle that only lives two millionths of a second.

Moving Muons A model of the truck that will be used to transport the Muon g-2 ring, placed on a streetscape for scale. The truck will be escorted by police and other vehicles when it moves from Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York to a barge, and then from the barge to Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Illinois. Fermilab

After the discovery of the Higgs boson last summer, particle physicists are exploring new avenues to help shed light on how the universe works. But the most intricate physics experiments need ginormous machinery, which is expensive and difficult to build. Rather than construct something from scratch, two of the nation’s premier physics labs are repurposing some old equipment. Transferring it to a new home will be a huge undertaking of its own.

In the suburbs outside Chicago, the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory was once home to the world’s most powerful particle accelerator. After its storied Tevatron shut down, Fermilab scientists started looking to muons for the future. Muons are negatively charged subatomic particles, much heavier than electrons, and they’re interesting for several reasons, like their incredibly short lifespan: They last only 2.2 millionths of a second.Muons wobble like a spinning top, and when they’re in a magnetic field, they start to rotate. The way they move, called gyromagnetic procession, can tell physicists very interesting things. At Brookhaven National Laboratory, physicists already have a device for measuring muons, so Fermilab scientists are in luck. Except the device is a 600-ton, 50-foot-diameter ring with cryogenically cooled magnets--not exactly easy to ship.

During a visit to Fermilab last fall, I learned about this device from Chris Polly, the project manager for a new muon experiment called Muon g-2. He didn’t seem fazed at all by the prospect of getting the huge muon ring from New York to northern Illinois. We have the Great Lakes and the Mississippi, after all.This week, Brookhaven and Fermilab announced their plans to move the ring on an epic barge journey. The trip will be tense, because the ring’s massive electromagnet cannot tilt or twist more than a few degrees, or the wiring inside will be irreparably damaged. It will float from New York Harbor in June, down the East Coast, around Florida, up the Gulf Coast and up the Mississippi River by July.

Once it arrives in Illinois, the ring will be placed on a special truck built for this purpose. Last fall, Fermilab scientists measured the state's highway toll booths to make sure it would fit. It will--with just four inches of clearance, as Polly told me at the time. It will drive at night, to minimize traffic delays.