Physicists Raid Tevatron for Parts Fermilab Icon Plundered Amid Tight Budgets and Shifting Scientific Aims
IN FOCUS NEWS HIGH-ENERGY PHYSICS Physicists raid Tevatron for parts Fermilab icon plundered amid tight budgets and shifting scientific aims. BY EUGENIE SAMUEL REICH CANNIBALIZING THE TEVATRON Parts at the Tevatron and its two main experiments, the CDF and D0, are being t is a 4,000-tonne edifice that stands three considered for recycling in the wake of the collider’s closure in September 2011. stories high, chock full of particle detectors, Antiproton power supplies, electronics and photo source Imultiplier tubes, all layered like a giant onion Possibly open around a cylindrical magnet. During 26 years Booster of operation at the Fermi National Accelerator to visitors Laboratory in Batavia, Illinois, this behemoth, Main injector the Collider Detector at Fermilab (CDF), and recycler helped to find the top quark and chased the • Photomultiplier tubes for Higgs boson. But since the lab’s flagship parti- nuclear-structure experiment CDF cle collider, the Tevatron, was switched off in • Electronics for the Large September 2011, the detector has been surplus Hadron Collider in Europe • Central magnet for a stock — and it is now slowly being cannibal- possible particle-decay ized for parts. Beams repurposed experiment When the Tevatron closed, Fermilab for neutrino and • Possible educational display announced that the CDF would become an other experiments educational display. Along with its companion experiment, D0, the detector was supposed to form the centrepiece of a tour through simu- Tevatron lated control rooms and decommissioned Possible educational display accelerator tunnels. But tight budgets for experimental particle physicists — combined 500 m with their tendency to tinker and recycle — are pushing the outcome in a different direction, D0 at least for the CDF.
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