Fermilab’s Tevatron, the largest particle accelerator in the United States, was shut down on September 30 after a celebrated career of 28 years that has provided us with some of the greatest discoveries in particle physics.
This leaves the European lab CERN (see photo on left) to lead the way into future discoveries with its Large Hadron Collider. This landmark in experimental physics is an opportunity to reexamine the theoretical model physicists have constructed and relied on in their search to understand the workings of the universe: the standard model of particle physics.
