Selective Perspective

dez-ray:

quantumaniac:

The End of an Era: Tevatron Closing 

Just east of Batavia, Illinois, in the midst of a large field surrounded by suburbs, lies Fermilab - home of the Tevatron. For more than a quarter-century, scientists have beenw working at Tevatron, which was the highest energy particle accelerator in the world (passed recently by the LHC,) to recreate conditions that existed just after the Big Bang. This Friday, scientists will shut down the Tevatron for good. Some believe that this shows the lack of interest in science shown by the U.S; and forfeiting the country’s once leading spot in particle physics. In fact, Bill Foster (a U.S. particle physicist who has worked on the Tevatron for 22 years, said: “The decline of particle physics in the U.S. is really a symptom of the erratic and sometimes anti-scientific attitudes in Washington and the incompetence of Congress in managing science,” said Foster, a Democrat who is running again for Congress next year.

However, all is not lost for Fermilab. With the physics world abuzz lately over the potentially faster than light neutrinos, Fermilab is the only other lab in the world able to recreate the experiment and verify or deny the results.  The only other laboratory capable of redoing the CERN experiment is a lab in Japan that was damaged during the recent earthquake and tsunami. Fermilab, named after scientist Enrico Fermi who was a leader in atomic energy (known for his help in the development of the first atomic bomb,) plans to stay at the top of the world’s physics research. Just because the Tevatron is closing down, they have no intention of stopping.

In fact, Fermilab wishes to build an even more impressive particle accelerator then Tevatron. Instead of attempting to create a higher-energy accelerator than CERN, the idea is to develop an accelerate than collides many more particles than any other current technology. 

By early next year, Fermilab scientists will hope to determine from Tevatron’s last data collections whether the Higgs Boson doesn’t exist or is still a plausible theory. 

I Hate Everything!

(via pieceinthepuzzlehumanity-deacti)