The Last Days of the Tevatron

[beamjockey]

The press has been commenting on the imminent shutoff of the Tevatron.

Nature; DeKalb Daily Chronicle, National Public Radio.

Here's a Tevatron timeline and Fermilab's plans for the future.

Here's a rundown of notable physics results from the Tevatron's years of operation (but I'm sorry to see the tau neutrino omitted from this list).

I understand the U.S. House of Representatives Science, Space and Technology Committee will visit Fermilab next Wednesday and hear testimony.

Comments

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

Must be frustrating for them to have evidence of something they don't believe is happening, that they can't make disappear (within accepted norms of behavior, I mean).

Which shouldn't overshadow the Tevatron shutdown. It seems premature to me, but that was fought out long ago, and they decided to stop supporting it.

And, how does this affect you? Job, and all?

[beamjockey.livejournal.com]

In a nutshell, Fermilab keeps on doing physics with several smaller accelerators, such as the Main Injector.

There remains plenty of work to do. My job, at the moment, involves evaluating shielding for future operations and new facilities. So I haven't been involved directly with the Tevatron for some time.

Near the beginning, I spent two years running test stands. As they were building a thousand magnets for the Tevatron (plus spares) the crew I was on cooled each one down, powered it up, deliberately quenched it a few times-- that was fun-- and performed enough measurements on it to fill a two-inch binder. So, in my own small way, I helped build the Tevatron.