Posted on 09/30/2011 6:26:20 AM PDT by lump in the melting pot
One of the world's most powerful "atom smashers", at the leading edge of scientific discovery for a quarter of a century, is about to shut down.
The Tevatron facility near Chicago will fire its last particle beams on Friday after federal funding ran out.
Housed in a 6km-long circular tunnel under the Illinois prairie, the Tevatron leaves behind a rich scientific legacy.
This includes finding nature's heaviest elementary particle: the top quark.
Since 1985, engineers have been accelerating bunches of proton and antiproton particles around the Tevatron's main ring at close to the speed of light, then smashing them together in a bid to unlock the secrets of the Universe.
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.co.uk ...
The free traders have nothing to do with it and you know it. The DOE just got through shoveling all of its money to “green” projects. It’s been all over the news. The Obama admn. is against anything nuclear. They are a bunch of scientific Luddites.
Exactly. It was political games playing that make the SSC appear to be a political boondoggle. Everyone forgets that.
Great idea. Super idea. Only way I can improve on it is if we build it in my district.
Them free traders are responsible for all them illegitimate births too. And druggies.
Pier Oddone, director of Fermilab, told the AFP news agency: "In our field we don't keep beating our heads if we have been outdone by another machine."
Yes, that's what Fermilab's administrator said. Here's what the scientists working on the Trevatron and the expert panel of scientists who were assembled to make recommendations about closing the Trevaton said.
Researchers have repeatedly stated that they are closing in on the Higgs, which - if found - would explain the origins of mass and is the last missing jigsaw piece in the most widely accepted theory of particle physics - the Standard Model.
A bid to extend the Tevatron's lifetime by three years was denied in January 2011 because the US Department of Energy could not come up with the extra $35m per year required to keep the machine running. An expert panel recommended the extension but its advice was not followed, turning the quest for the Higgs into a one-horse race.
"In the Higgs game, we are still competitive and we hope to have our final results next year," said Professor Stefan Soldner-Rembold, spokesperson for the Tevatron's DZero experiment.
He told BBC News: "There are always reasons for and against an extension. I still think especially in terms of the Higgs it would have been nice to have another three years. We can see now that we are so close."
So, after three years and another $105 million it will be obsolete? What a bargain.
If it discovers what the scientists working on it, and the select committee, think it might, it could be a bargain.
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