CHICAGO — The end came at 2:36 p.m. Friday, when Helen Edwards pressed red and blue buttons in the control room at Fermilab in Batavia, Ill., and sent a science legend into the black hole of history.
Although researchers will crunch data for years, the work of the famed Tevatron particle accelerator is done. And that’s a shame, said Edwards and many of the other scientists who gathered for the power-down.
“I feel that it’s sort of a sad time,” said Edwards, who led the design, construction and commissioning for the Tevatron.
Protons have been colliding along the Tevatron’s 4-mile underground loop since 1983, spinning off scientific breakthroughs along the way.
But the accelerator was dethroned by the Large Hadron Collider, which is underground along the border between Switzerland and France. The 17-mile accelerator started operating officially in November 2009.
In December, the new accelerator broke Tevatron’s record for a high-energy particle beam. Four months later, it smashed its own record.
Now Fermilab is forcing itself to shift attention elsewhere. Scientists are focusing on what they call the “High Intensity Frontier,” the trillions and trillions of particle collisions the lab coordinates every year.
As part of the shift, Fermi is planning a couple of other major projects — one that would study the makeup of subatomic neutrinos by firing them underground to South Dakota.
The other, Project X, would provide a more intense beam of protons that could delve into areas inaccessible even to the LHC.
But funding is an issue. Construction of new projects, upgrading existing facilities and maintaining all of them is expected to total billions of dollars, Fermilab said.
Edwards said it would be a wise investment.
“The understanding of basic science is not only intellectually interesting,” she said. “It’s the foundation from which all manufacturing and production comes. Those are the things that we’re in such trouble over at the moment. You need the seeds, the ideas.”
After the shutdown ceremony, hundreds gathered in the cavernous lobby of Wilson Hall to remember the Tevatron’s heady past with toasts fueled by soda, beer and wine.
