Giant Particle Storage Ring Travelling Through Darien, Woodridge on Journey to Fermilab

A particle storage ring spanning 50 feet in diameter will be travelling through Darien and Woodridge this summer during a 3,200-mile journey from New York to Illinois.

The giant electromagnet is headed to Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, just outside Batavia, where it will be used in an experiment called Muon g-2, and will study the properties of muons, tiny subatomic particles that exist for only 2.2 millionths of a second. The ring, made of steel and aluminum, is part of a machine built at New York's Brookhaven National Laboratory in the 1990s.

Although most of the machine can be disassembled and brought to Fermilab in trucks, the massive electromagnet must be transported in one piece, and cannot tilt or twist more than a few degrees without being irreparably damaged. The Muon g-2 team has devised a plan that involves loading the ring onto a specially prepared barge and bringing it down the East Coast, around the tip of Florida and up the Mississippi River to Illinois.

The ring is expected to leave New York in mid-June and arrive in Illinois in late July.

“It costs about 10 times less to move the magnet from Brookhaven to Illinois than it would to build a new one,” said Lee Roberts of Boston University, co-spokesperson for the Muon g-2 experiment. “So that’s what we’re going to do. It’s an enormous effort from all sides, but it will be worth it.”

From the Mississippi River, the barge will travel along the Illinois/Des Plaines River before stopping at the Ozinga port in Lemont, located near the Lemont Road bridge. From there, the ring will be loaded on to the back of another truck and driven to Fermilab.

The ring is one of the widest loads ever to be transported across roads in Illinois, so the proposed route takes it across the widest roads available, including I-355 and I-88. Because the truck will move at about 5 miles per hour and will require portions of roads to be closed, the move from the port to Fermilab is scheduled to take place on two consecutive nights with escort from police and other officials.

No disruption of commuter traffic is expected, officials said.

Fermilab spokesperson Andre Salles said the Lemont port was chosen because of its proximity to Lemont Road, which is the northern route they want to use to access I-355.

"We looked at four ports in the area, and while the others were suitable for moving the device off of the barge and onto the truck, the Ozinga port presented us with the clearest path to Lemont Road, with the least amount of tree trimming or sign removal," Salles said.

A team from Fermilab has already met with officials from the village of Lemont to discuss preliminary plans and what the village can expect during the move.

"Our main concern was just understanding the impact on traffic and what it means for our residents," said Lemont Village Administrator Ben Wehmeier. "We're looking forward to working with Fermilab to make the move as easy as possible."

Wehmeier said the village has already discussed the possibility of shutting down a portion of Lemont Road so residents can get up-close look at the ring.

"It's a great opportunity for residents to see a really unique piece of equipment, so we're looking at different options to make that happen," Wehmeier said.

Once at Fermilab, the storage ring will be used to hold muons created in the laboratory's accelerators. Muons “wobble” when placed in a magnetic field, and based on what is already known about the universe, scientists have predicted the exact value of that wobble. An experiment using the same machine at Brookhaven in the 1990s saw evidence for—though not definitive proof of—a departure from that expected value.

“Fermilab can generate a much more intense and pure beam of muons, so the Muon g-2 experiment should be able to close that margin of error,” said Chris Polly, project manager for Fermilab. “If we can do that, this experiment could indicate that there is exciting science awaiting beyond what we have observed.”

The experiment is scheduled to begin taking data in 2016, officials said.

“The ring is a wonder of scientific engineering,” said William Morse of Brookhaven. “We’re extremely proud of it, and excited to see it used in this next-generation experiment.”

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