Since 1983, the Tevatron particle accelerator at Fermilab outside Chicago has been faithfully smashing particles and probing deeper into the mysteries of physics. But its time is nearly at an end. The Large Hadron Collider—that big European underground ring you might have heard of—surpassed Tevatron in size and energy. The American collider's operators had hoped to extend its life a few more years, especially with LHC still getting up to speed. But the money just wasn't there, and so the announcement came yesterday that Tevatron would shut down in September. From John Conway at DISCOVER blog Cosmic Variance:
In the fall, the Department of Energy’s High Energy Physics Advisory Panel recommended that the Tevatron be funded to run for three years beyond the planned end in September of 2011, largely in order to provide additional information in the search for the Higgs boson. ... But in a letter to day to the chair of HEPAP, the head of the Office of Science at the Department of Energy, William Brinkman, wrote that “Unfortunately, the current budgetary climate is very challenging, and additional funding has not been identified. Therefore…operation of the Tevatron will end in FY2011, as originally scheduled.”
Conway's lengthy eulogy for a particle accelerator
is a great read, including plenty of the history of the rivalry between American physicists and the CERN physicists in Europe building their own huge smashers, leading up to the LHC. Related Content: 80beats: New Revelations From Particle Colliders Past, Present & Future
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Image: Wikimedia Commons
