Tevatron To Shut Down At End of 2011

universegeek writes "It appears Fermilab's Tevatron will be shutting down by the end of 2011. Rumors confirmed today at the ISP220 conference say that the DOE denied further funding for the project. Looks like the LHC is our only hope in the hunt for the Higgs after all."

Comments

Modern world has its priorities wrong

[hessian]

One silly recession, and everyone's going all budget cuts crazy. They're saving money so that we can have more big Wall Street firms making "profits" by selling financial instruments. The Chinese aren't fooled; they know our currency's about to crash and no amount of paper-shuffling will fix that. We're selling stuff to ourselves and calling it profit, just like in the dot-com boom, without "making" any new wealth.

In the meantime, the science programs we cut (to "save money") form the basis of our future. Our current economy is probably more of a transition than a permanent state. Anyone else think we're screwing up by spending so much time on shuffling paper around to earn money, and so little money on the technologies that could define our future?

Re:Modern world has its priorities wrong

[Yvan256]

Anyone else think we're screwing up by spending so much time on shuffling paper around to earn money, and so little money on the technologies that could define our future?

Everybody who's not working for Wall Street firms, banks or lawyers. Unfortunately, it seems they're the assholes running this planet.

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy reference: the doomsday scenario is real and the people from B ark are in charge.

Re:Modern world has its priorities wrong

[I8TheWorm]

Or, it could be that it's been rendered obsolete by the LHC which is larger and more powerful.

Re:Modern world has its priorities wrong

[Monkeedude1212]

Because every observatory on Earth was rendered obsolete by Hubble, right?

Even an inferior Tevatron can produce results, two instruments operating at a time is often better than one really good one.

Re:Modern world has its priorities wrong

[afidel]

And that's assuming the LHC works on schedule, which so far it has failed to do. Also being able to recreate results (that are within the energy envelope on the Tevatron) with a different set of instruments is important to the scientific method.

Re:Modern world has its priorities wrong

[s4m7]

the creation of financial instruments is not even remotely akin to firefighting or policework. As a society, we would be fine (maybe better off) without CDO's. They were originally created because traditional investment markets were "tapped out" relative to the pool of investment cash. So instead of correctly driving up the value of REAL assets, we distributed that money into, and inflated the value of potential/imaginary assets. That's a big part of what fueled the decline of income requirements on home loans, and basically directly contributed to the economic situation we're in.

So instead of suggesting that we stop paying firefighters and police, what the parent was saying was more like "quit paying people to set fires and rob liquor stores, and increase research in making fires and crimes less likely to happen in the future"

Re:Modern world has its priorities wrong

[lennier]

In the meantime, the science programs we cut (to "save money") form the basis of our future.

While that makes sense generally, I'm wondering just exactly what the ROI curve for expensive high-energy physics tools like the LHC and Tevatron actually is. The collider and hot fusion people keep saying 'fund us more and we'll get huge energy breakthroughs, but the reality always seems to fall a long way short.

Looking at the sweep of physics over the 20th century, it seems like most of the really big breakthroughs were achieved using tools that by today's standards were laughably primitive. The most cutting edge physics experiments of today - Bose-Einstein condensates, quantum teleportation - seem to be still confirming and not invalidating physics theories invented in the 1930s, on pencil and paper. Doesn't that strike anyone as a bit odd?

The high-water mark of literal 'bang for the buck' physics research seems to have been the H-bomb in the 1950s. Since then, from the outside, it seems to have been a long row of fiddling with ever subtler refinements of Standard Model equations which all tell us 'actually, no, you can't get unlimited free energy, flying cars, antigravity, unbound quark states - but we need to take more observations to be sure.'

Something about this isn't adding up for me. Studying electricity and magnetism got us a motherlode of radio and electronics. Studing nuclear decay got us bombs and reactors. Studying gravity, quarks and the strong and weak forces have got us.... crickets and tumbleweed.... what, exactly?

It's not that we haven't yet seen engineering applications for post-1960s high-energy physics. It's that the brightest minds seem to be telling us that it's theoretically increasingly unlikely for us to ever see the Standard Model invalidated, let alone any hope of engineering applications from itl. Yet we keep sinking money into colliders.

What is it that we're expecting to find in the big colliders that we haven't yet seen? What are the odds of finding it? Are we looking in the right place? If we are and are, is all the research being shared publically, or are the weapons guys keeping something back?

The amount of money spent chasing big physics vs the decreasing payoff just doesn't add up to me. I'd like to think there's a big conspiracy to hide some really neat bang somewhere, because otherwise it just seems very disappointing compared to the glory days of the 30s-50s.

Re:Modern world has its priorities wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

When the electron was discovered it was thought to be absolutely worthless, prediction is very hard, especially about the future.

Discovering the higgs will fill in the biggest hole in the standard model, it's what gives everything in the universe mass. And the hope is that hopefully the higgs decay pattern will point towards super-symmetry, which would be one of, if not the biggest discoveries in the history of science. Currently we can't explain, touch, see, 80% of the mass of the universe, I think trying to work out that massive gap in our knowledge is well worth the funding.

And, aside from all that-- it's a fantastic research facility that funds some of the greatest scientists on Earth, and it's on American soil. If the US keeps cutting science and research programs, then guess what, no US kid will want to move into science and the US will fade into the distance as Europe continues to dominate high-energy physics, and eventually, every other field.

Re:Modern world has its priorities wrong

[diegocg]

everyone's going all budget cuts crazy

Except the military budget. If someone manages to classify the Tevatron as a weapon and get it managed by the MoD, it won't be canceled.

Re:Modern world has its priorities wrong

[Thud457]

This is how you can tell the recent discovery of "fiscal conservatism" by Congress is a kettle of bullshit.
If they really thought things were really that dire, they'd be talking about cutting the military (and/or SS / MC).
Instead, it's a stalking horse to cut "projects I don't like".

Re:Modern world has its priorities wrong

[raddan]

And, it should be pointed out, Americans can only work at LHC through a sponsoring member instituition such as a member university (like my alma mater, Boston University). Direct participation in work at the LHC (e.g., being employed there) is only available to citizens belonging to EU member nations. Shutting down Fermilab makes it even LESS desirable to become a physicist in the United States.

delay

[Anonymous Coward]

Fermilabs faulty equipment delayed LHC for more than a year. It will only be good to have them away from this business.

Looks like the LHC is our only hope....

[Picardo85]

If there actually is a Higgs Boson

My biggest complaint about Bill Clinton

[CrazyJim1]

Bill Clinton spent billions on a supercollider in Texas, and half way through its completion, he canceled the project.

The guy was an economic genius and what this country needs to get itself out of debt, but he failed in that situation.

Physics research can be greater than money because of the new discoveries it brings mankind, but all you know this.

Re:My biggest complaint about Bill Clinton

[Anonymous Coward]

Bill Clinton spent billions on a supercollider in Texas, and half way through its completion, he canceled the project.

As I remember it, the project lost support as the number of potential sites was narrowed down, because the politicians just wanted the big wad of cash for their state rather than the science it would produce. When it was down to one state, you basically had one state's politicians supporting it.

Re:My biggest complaint about Bill Clinton

[ianare]

Actually, Clinton stopped and even reversed the disastrous fiscal policies of Reagan and Bush. Unfortunately, Bush II undid all of that work ...

See for yourself