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Summary US atom-smasher, world's biggest particle collider for nearly a quarter-century, closed forever.
A powerful US atom-smasher that was the worlds biggest particle collider for nearly a quarter-century closed forever on Friday, solidifying Europes place as the world leader in physics.The Tevatron began its collider work in 1985, as part of the US Department of Energys Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, and its shutdown comes at a tough time for budget-squeezed US science and space programs.Tevatron has been overtaken by a more powerful atom smasher -- the worlds largest -- the Large Hadron Collider, built on the French-Swiss border by the European Center for Nuclear Research (CERN), a consortium of 20 member nations.But in its day, the Tevatron made some major contributions, including the identification of the top quark in 1995 and the discovery in 2000 of the tau neutrino, an elusive piece of the Standard Model of Physics.Now the only part of the Standard Model left to identify is the Higgs-Boson particle which, if it exists, is believed to give objects mass. The Tevatron helped physicists narrow down where it might be, but could not find it.The Tevatron, which cost about $50 million per year to operate, also led to a host of more concrete advances, chief among them the widespread use of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machines for medical diagnosis.A Fermilab spokeswoman said there are no layoffs directly tied to the shutdown.Of the 600 scientists on the Tevatron, many will continue to analyze Tevatron data for the next two years and many are moving to other Fermilab experiments, said Elizabeth Clements.American physicists will now concentrate on more precise -- and less expensive -- questions at home and work with CERN on high-energy projects like the search for the Higgs-Boson, sometimes called the god particle.The Tevatron has made significant contributions to our understanding of the building blocks of the universe and how they work and fit together, said Pier Oddone, director of the Fermi Laboratory, at the closing ceremony.But while one era is now ending, another is beginning at Fermilab, he said.
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