GLEN ELLYN, Ill. - It had a Twitter hashtag and a GPS tracker. It even posed for photos with groupies.
The 50-foot-wide, 15-ton electromagnet attracted a sensation wherever it went during its slow, delicate 3,200-mile journey from New York to suburban Chicago - its circuitous route took it around Florida to New Orleans. The land-and-sea trip culminated when scientists threw a rock star’s welcome for the mysterious, shrink-wrapped cargo on Friday as it arrived at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory to help study blazing-fast particles.
Fermilab officials plan to use the magnet in a physics experiment called Muon g-2 that will study subatomic particles at their lab in Batavia, outside Chicago. The experiment will study the properties of muons, subatomic particles that live only 2.2 millionths of a second.
The results could create new discoveries in the realm of particle physics, said Chris Polly, manager of the Muon g-2 project at Fermilab.
The hulking magnet is a hand-me-down from New York, where it was built in the 1990s by scientists at the Brookhaven National Lab on eastern Long Island.
Brookhaven scientists no longer had a need for the electromagnet, and shipping it for about $3 million was cheaper than the alternative. Constructing a new electromagnet could have cost as much as $30 million, Polly estimated.
Front Section, Pages 5 on 07/27/2013