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Tevatron Has Come To the End of Its Run

Med-trump writes "The U.S. government's Chicago-area Fermilab has been at the forefront of high-energy physics. That's in large part thanks to the Tevatron, the machine that first reached the energies needed to discover the last quark in the Standard Model. But the Tevatron has come to the end of its run; at 2pm on Friday, it will be shut down for the last time."

18 of 115 comments (clear)

  1. Re:So Long Farewell Avidazen Goodbye by L4t3r4lu5 · · Score: 2

    So Long Farewell Avidazen Goodbye

    Auf wiedersehen. It's german ;)

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  2. In the words of Darth Vader... by Jedi+Holocron · · Score: 2

    Noooooooooooooooo!!!

    (as revised by George "Tweaker" Lucas)

    1. Re:In the words of Darth Vader... by SleazyRidr · · Score: 2

      DO NOT WANT!

  3. Re:No CERN neutrino corroboration? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    not all of Fermilab is shutting down, just the Tevatron - they can still make a neutrino beam. Just like at CERN, the neutrinos aren't generated by the LHC.

  4. Re:No CERN neutrino corroboration? by Richard_at_work · · Score: 2

    No, they had already captured the data, they were looking at interpreting it and checking delays to confirm the CERN results - no new data was to be captured.

    And lets face it, CERNs experiment was not the first to track neutrinos, there is plenty of neutrino tracking data sets out there - they just need to be checked with this in mind (remember, if you aren't looking for something, the chances of you finding it when it exists is smaller than when you are actually looking for it - an unexpected discovery is less frequent than an expected discovery).

  5. I'll be hoisting a pint... by rnturn · · Score: 2, Interesting

    ... or two in honor of the Tevatron's long run.

    I'm wondering what's going to become of the physicists that work at Fermilab. I know one of them from my college days. He's worked there since graduating in the late '70s, one of the few physics majors I knew that actually found employment doing work in physics. (Many others seemed to go into software development.)

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    CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
    1. Re:I'll be hoisting a pint... by Xzzy · · Score: 4, Interesting

      The lab isn't going anywhere. While a few groups are justifiably concerned about their jobs, the overall mood around the lab is optimism. New projects are underway, accelerator research is ongoing, and proposals for new experiments are always in the works.

      There's plenty of work left to be done. The real concern going forward is keeping the government willing to spend money on it.

  6. Re:So Long Farewell ARGH Goodbye by kemosabi · · Score: 2

    Um, no. It's the song the children sing before going to bed in "The Sound of Music" that he appears to have in mind.

  7. Expect to see parts at... by ackthpt · · Score: 3, Funny

    Weird Stuff and hamfests.

    "Whatcha want for this 5 volt, 2,000 amp power supply?"

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    A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
  8. Actually by medv4380 · · Score: 4, Informative
    They will be collecting new data with an upgraded MINOS experiment.

    Just looking at the old data will prove nothing from the old MINOS experiment because it suggests that CERN did it right with the OPERA experiment. The problem before is the margin of error on the MINOS test is far too high causing the measured speed to be faster then the speed of light with a margin of error overlapping the speed of light. They need to do a slight upgrade and redo the tests to get the Margin of Error down.

  9. Re:So Long Farewell ARGH Goodbye by wsxyz · · Score: 2

    I don't remember any tevatron in the Sound of Music.

  10. And so the US fades into second place by presidenteloco · · Score: 2

    in yet another science and technology field.

    However, there is no reason to fear. The military technology budget is largely unscathed.

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    Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
    1. Re:And so the US fades into second place by SLi · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Why do you think you need to be #1 in everything? Yeah, I know I'm going to be modded down as flamebait, probably rightly so, but still this needs to be said.

      What makes you think you even can be #1 in everything? Now I realize you Americans tend to see yourselves as #1 in everything, or that's how it looks to the rest of the world, expect the few hot topics of the day where you grudgingly admit falling to "#2 place" (probably because you think it as "#1: Rest of the world; #2: America" so there is no third place) and which nobody remembers a week from now.

      Seriously. You cannot compete and win in everything. You choose your specialty and excel in that. Then you spin that as the most important thing in the world so you can feed your overly nationalistic prides. That's what it looks like to the rest of the world. But even then you sometimes you have to make strategic changes to your areas of focus.

      No, it's not like most other countries don't do that kind of chutzpah, but there's a difference in degree. It seems to have a strong correlation to all kind of flag-waving and pledges to the flag in classrooms. That too happens mainly 1) in African banana republics and 2) the USA. And the rest of the developed world cares more about case #2 because we have more dealings with you. Please, please grow up and realize that the world doesn't revolve around you. You cannot be #1 in everything. You are not that great and that much above everybody else, and that kind of arrogance only serves to annoy the rest of the civilized world.

  11. Re:No CERN neutrino corroboration? by Steve+Max · · Score: 3, Informative

    No. As others said, the Tevatron is just the last stage of a chain of accelerators, one that was used (nowadays) just to collide high energy protons and antiprotons and "see what's inside". The neutrinos come from the previous stage (called "Main Injector"): they used to take a few protons off the beam, collide them into a target in a very well defined direction, focus the muons that come from this, get neutrinos from the muon decay and measure them near the detector and in Minnesota, to get an idea of their oscillation (and now, also of their speed). The experiment that does this is called MINOS, and it doesn't depend on the Tevatron at all. Actually, shutting down the Tevatron will help MINOS: they will get more protons, therefore more neutrinos and more data.

    By the way, this is exacly the same general arrangement used by the OPERA experiment (the one with FTL neutrinos), where the neutrinos are produced in CERN and measured there and in Gran Sasso.

  12. Fermilab research will continue after Tevatron by nan0 · · Score: 2
    For all interested in the future of Fermilab - here is a great local article:

    http://goo.gl/kqXJa

    among the highlights - they get the data from CERN in realtime, and can actually control the LHC remotely.

    oh, and the buttons to stop & start the tevatron are pretty cool ;)

  13. Re:No Replacement? by Doc+Ruby · · Score: 2

    Yeah, when the budgets didn't mean hundreds of $BILLIONS (only dozens) for Star Wars defense contractors, there was suddenly no more money for science.

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  14. Re:No Replacement? by Doc+Ruby · · Score: 2, Informative

    Government transfers of money to the old is money saved from them from before they were old. The transfers of money to the poor are about equal to the money stolen from them in so many ways.

    Military/intel costs are over $1.5 TRILLION a year), including loads of money given to the old and the poor: veterans and their families. The entire budget, apart from $TRILLIONS in handouts given to banks, is only $3.5T - including everything else the Federal government does. The proportions are obvious when you're honest: we waste most of our money on military/intel. If we spent $300B instead of $1500B, we'd have a surplus (the deficit is $1.17T). The military/intel waste is practically our entire problem, especially since dollars pushed through it is some of the least productive in creating other production for American consumption, or anything else of value to America.

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    make install -not war

  15. Re:No Replacement? by lgw · · Score: 2

    Government transfers of money to the old is money saved from them from before they were old.

    This is completely false, aside from government pensions (to some small %). Social Security is in no way a savings plan, it's a direct transfer of money. Medicare (the largest single expense) doesn't even look like a savings plan. That's just a bizarre claim to make.

    . The proportions are obvious when you're honest: we waste most of our money on military/intel. If we spent $300B instead of $1500B, we'd have a surplus (the deficit is $1.17T).

    Totally made up numbers. Here are some real numbers:

    $820 B - Medicare.
    $720 B - Social Security
    $699 B - Defense and wars
    $412 B - Income Security (informally, "welfare", tho thats really a bad term)
    $215 B - Interest on the debt
    $210 B - Federal pensions
    $489 B - Everything else the government does

    $1301 B - Federal deficit.

    The idea that we could balance the budget by reducing defense speding is an outright lie, designed to distract you from the very real problems America is facing. Link in my sig has citations for all these numbers.

    Set defense to 0, set "eveyrhting else the government does" to 0. The budget still isn't balanced.

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    Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.