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

[pellik]

Think of all the money we could save in the long run if instead of paying firefighters or police we just researched how to make everything fireproof and crimeproof.

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

[Straterra]

At least we'll have hairstylists!

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

[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

[Nadaka]

You are forgetting things like modern computer technology actually does take advantage of some advanced physics like quantum tunneling.

Re:Modern world has its priorities wrong

[andi75]

I think it was the famous 18th century mathematician Laplace who once said "there is no military application for number theory", and less then 150 years later, its applications (cryptography) where probably one of the deciding factors for the outcome of World War II.

I don't think we can rule out that high energy physics will give us cool stuff to play with eventually.

Re:Modern world has its priorities wrong

[Colonel Korn]

A very large fraction of biomedical research and nanoscale self assembling materials research is dependent on unfathomably expensive high energy physics tools like the Advanced Photon Source at Argonne. Without this kind of beam we'd have lost a big chunk of the most impressive medical treatments now available and a lot of computer technology we take for granted, and the next generation of technology (meaning a 30 year generation, not an iPhone generation) is going to be an order of magnitude more dependent on high energy scattering. And the generation after that will likely include things like fusion.

The thing that's not adding up for you is your lack of knowledge about recent research. If anything, long term research pays off much more now than it did in the early 20th century. And you even point out that we're just now realizing things theorized or primitively demonstrated back then, which is a further demonstration of the huge long-term payoff of basic science research!

Re:Modern world has its priorities wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

The Large Hadron Collider, a.k.a the largest scientific endeavor in human history, cost 6 billion dollars.

A Gerald R. Ford-class aircraft carrier costs 8.5 billion dollars, and the US Navy will be introducing ten such aircraft carriers into their arsenal, the equivalent of fourteen LHCs.

I don't think it's science programs that need to be cut.

Re:Modern world has its priorities wrong

[Khomar]

Here is a chart of the spending by department.

http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?get_gallerynr=172

In my post, I may have overstated the size a bit. So I guess we have one additional option -- instead of eliminating two programs, we can eliminate one and then all other government spending. :-)

Here is an article placing the current US deficit at $1.5 trillion:

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aNaqecavD9ek

Another interesting site is ShadowStats which shows a more accurate representation of government figures that they have been manipulating over the past three decades.

http://www.shadowstats.com/

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.

Re:Modern world has its priorities wrong

[LordNacho]

Even I think that, and I work in finance.

If there were prospects for a young engineer from Oxford, maybe I wouldn't have done what most of the other engineering students did. I think it took one term before everyone realised you can work your ass off for decades designing stuff and getting paid peanuts, or you can work your ass off for a few years designing derivatives and get paid ten times that. Who in their right mind wouldn't go for the gold? That's what society is telling young engineers to go do.

True story: a derivs trader I knew was an engineer (a real one). Asked why he quit early on to work in the City: "I found out what my boss makes."

As it happens, I've carved myself a comfortable niche in the finance world, but for most people who ask me about it, I tell them it's not worth it. Long hours, lots of politics, and in the end, you'll never feel you're paid enough. And in the meantime, (if you're and engineer) you'll wonder what you could have done. My personal favourites: space ships, Formula 1, chip design.

There really are too many kids who want to work in finance. The thing is, they don't have much of a passion for finance either (it does have interesting bits, just not where everyone thinks). These kids end up screwing up both finance AND the rest of the world. Don't do it, kids.

Re:Modern world has its priorities wrong

[lennier]

A very large fraction of biomedical research and nanoscale self assembling materials research is dependent on unfathomably expensive high energy physics tools like the Advanced Photon Source at Argonne

Light sources do seem to be one of the most immediately useful applications of accelerators, yes. But those aren't actually a direct result of the quest for new physics, are they? The beam intensities that most of the light sources operate at are nowhere near pioneering research-grade. It's all old physics. New engineering, yes, but not new physics.

And the generation after that will likely include things like fusion.

See, that right there is the assumption I query.

If the history of controllable hot fusion has taught us one thing, it's that sustainable breakeven is not around the corner, and that attempting to get there costs an increasing amount yet keeps the mirage at just about the same distance in the future.

And that's strange to me, because Project Matterhorn started right after Manhattan, and uncontrolled fusion - the H-bomb - was a spectacular success. If there was one self-evident certainty in physics in the 1950s, it was that controllable fusion was the future of energy.

And yet 60 years later, it's still not. And it costs us more and more each year to verify that yes, we still can almost, but not quite, do it. We've become accustomed to a huge spiral of diminishing returns - and yet this awareness hasn't translated into a change in our belief that eventually we're going to crack it.

Maybe we are, and that'll be really fun if we do. But maybe we aren't. The curve suggests that we're on a solid course for 'aren't'.

This has huge implications for things like peak oil and climate change. Most of us tech-types are still operating on the assumption that the oil peak is a glitch and fusion is going to save all our asses. But what if it doesn't? Are we psychologically prepared to cope for the "we split the atom and went to the moon and now we can't even run tractors anymore???"

Because if we don't get some huge physics breakthrough, that's where we're headed. And increasingly, it looks like our lines of research are not pointing towards breakthroughs, but merely evolutionary finessing of the same grim equations: more people, less energy.

And you even point out that we're just now realizing things theorized or primitively demonstrated back then, which is a further demonstration of the huge long-term payoff of basic science research!

Once again: we're achieving new engineering of old physics concepts today, not new physics. Despite physics being the star of the sciences for decades, getting all the press and glamour, and a huge amount of government support right down to the level of 'born secret' classification.

From, say, the 1890s to the 1960s, there was this huge burst of conceptual revolution in basic physics. Everything seemed up for grabs, including logic itself being rewritten by quantum physics, flight in air and space, and the ability to destroy global civilisation with a button-press. It looked like a dead cert for this burst of innnovation at the basic physics level to continue.

But it didn't. For the next 60 years, we've been on the descending slope of the physics innovation curve - while still being on the midpoint of the engineering and applications curve.

Since most of us in the IT trade have been riding that late bulge in semiconductors, I don't think it's sunk in for us that the rest of physics hasn't kept up with Moore's Law. When it does, look out.

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

[Picardo85]

If there actually is a Higgs Boson

Budget cuts

[onyxruby]

Budget cuts, the one divide by zero scenario science can't route around.

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.

Well

[Barrinmw]

According to my father-in-law who works at fermilab, they pretty much are focusing on the hunt for sterile neutrinos at the moment. They essentially are leaving the search for the higgs to LHC anyway.

Re:My biggest complaint about Bill Clinton

[afidel]

Uh, the dude got a Rhodes scholarship to go study political science and economics at Oxford. That puts him in the top .000001% of all college students, which most people would consider genius level. Amazingly his wife is possibly even smarter. You might not like their politics but to question their intelligence just shows your own ignorance.

Missdirection - Idiots.

[cosm]

So the entire purpose of the Tevatron in the eyes of the politicians is that of a facility that will either find/not find the Higgs? The political community and those in control of the purse-strings only want the ability of Nationalistic chest-pumping of verifying Peter Higg's field and mass generating boson, but aside from that I am fairly sure science goes out the window past the international pissing contest. Are you telling me that a particle acceleration facility like that has not future economically or scientifically stimulating value, and that the immediate value of undercutting funding / shutdown is higher than the long-term scientific value to humanity?!?!

Until bankers and high-frequency traders discover a Unified Field Theory, or politicians can deduce a solution to the Riemann Hypothesis, or the lobbyist can solve Navier-Stokes, leave the big-boys alone to do Real Work (TM). Otherwise we will continually squander true talent in this country, pushing those with scientific inclinations to other parts of the world where it is actually valued.

Re:My biggest complaint about Bill Clinton

[Sponge Bath]

Please explain to me why I should be in favor of the government funding particle physics research.

Why don't you step into the box with the cat for a quick demonstration.

Several notes about Fermilab

[stox]

1) Scientists will be analyzing data from the Tevatron for years to come. Just because new data is no longer being produced doesn't mean the science stops.

2) Bob Young, one of the founders of Red Hat, credits Fermilab's adoption of Linux as one of the most significant events in success of Linux.

3) Fermilab pioneered the application of super-conductors for use in building the Tevatron.

4) The term "computing farms" was coined at Fermilab.

5) Both the bottom and top quarks were discovered at Fermilab. There is still a lot of science that can be done understanding both. The cancellation of BTev was tragic.

6) The original Linux CD driver was developed by one of the members of the DZero experiment at Fermilab.

Old friend, we will miss you.