Tevatron The Subatomic Particle Accelerator Shuts Down

Tevatron, USA’s most powerful subatomic particle accelerator will no longer be in use. One of the biggest landmarks in the international physics fraternity, the 6.3 km long subterranean ring served its purpose for more than 26 years. Tevatron has been smashing particles at almost the speed of light and produced impeccable results. Due to financial constraints the US department of energy has finally decided to shut the monster down. Tevatron will finally rest in peace on 30th of this month.

“Other people have had to turn off their colliders for the same reason that we’re having to turn ours off now: There’s a bigger, better game in town,” says Steve Holmes of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Ill., the preeminent particle physics lab in the United States and home to the Tevatron.

Even after shutting it down the task will not be over. The large amount of data recorded over the years requires considerable attention and it will not be an easy job to do. “Now that we’re stopping taking data, we can concentrate all of our energy on updating our analyses,” say Giovanni Punzi, a spokesman for the Tevatron’s Collider Detector at Fermilab.

During its long run it is believed that Tevatron produced data that will reveal great secrets about the subatomic particles. The results will light up the information about the Higgs boson, the particle that is thought to give mass to other particles. The information will further be used by The LHC, the sole contender in this field to carry out further operations.

Now with its big gun shut down, Fermilab has decided to shift its focus to other activities. They will be dismantling this and Tevatrons tits and bits will be used for other experimental purposes especially in the field of high energy particle.

With LHC being only one of its kinds all the unanswered questions will be now its responsibility. The baddest physics machine of all time will no more be serving its master but it has already laid down the foundation for the next and even baddest of its kind.

TeV Legacy

The Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, home to the Tevatron, has hosted a number of important discoveries over several decades.

December 1966

Weston, Ill., selected as the site for the new National Accelerator Laboratory

March 1972

First proton beam with energies at 200 GeV, the target energy, circles the main ring

May 1974

NAL becomes Fermilab, named for Enrico Fermi

June 1977

Discovery of the bottom quark

July 1979

U.S. Department of Energy signs off on the building of a superconducting accelerator, later called the Tevatron

October 1985

First collisions of protons and antiprotons observed at the Tevatron’s Collider Detector at Fermilab, with energy of 1.6 TeV

March 1995

Discovery of the top quark (particle tracks shown) reported by both detectors

March 1999

Direct observation of CP violation in neutral kaons, suggesting not all particles and their antiparticles behave symmetrically

July 2000

First direct observation of the tau neutrino, the third neutrino type

June 2009

Observation of the Omega-sub-b baryon, an exotic and much heavier cousin of the proton

July 2011

Discovery of the neutral Xi-sub-b particle furthers scientific understanding of how quarks form other matter particles