Tevatron: There's Life in the Old Girl Yet!

As you may know, at Fermilab the Tevatron continues to accumulate data on collisions between particles of 1 TeV (trillion electron volt) beam energy. Over in Europe, the Large Hadron Collider is now open for business, operating at 3.5 TeV; it is expected to reach twice that energy after some further upgrades.

Fermilab's current schedule, and budget, entails shutting the Tevatron down forever at the end of September 2011 (while continuing to run the 120-GeV Main Injector, and smaller accelerators, for other experiments). This has been the plan for several years.

This week, Fermilab's Director Pier Oddone has announced that he will seek ways to continue Tevatron operation for three more years.

This would require some sacrifices; other planned experiments would have to be slowed down. Even with savings from such measures, more funds would be needed in order to keep operating. We probably won't know for many months whether the Department of Energy and the U.S. Congress favor the idea.

I am pleased to hear that an extended run is being considered-- simply because of my fondness for the Tevatron. We grew up together. But I do recognize that these decisions are not easy, and that the answer may be "No."

Coverage in the Chicago Sun-Times.

Coverage in Symmetry Breaking

Coverage in Science's blog.