The Ruins of Science I ~CHtVE8 Whatever Happened to the Tevatron? MASSACHU OF TECHNOLOGy by JUN 3 0 2014 Suzanne E. Jacobs LIBRARIES B.S. Physics The University of Michigan, 2011 SUBMITTED TO THE PROGRAM IN COMPARATIVE MEDIA STUDIES/WRITING IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF SCIENCE IN SCIENCE WRITING AT THE MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY SEPTEMBER 2014 02014 Suzanne E. Jacobs. All rights reserved. The author hereby grants to MIT permission to reproduce and to distribute publicly paper and electronic copies of this thesis document in whole or in part in any medium now known or hereafter created. Signature redacted Signature of Author: Program in Comparative Media Studies/Writing June 13, 2014 3i gnature redacted Certified by: Corby Kummer Senior Editor, The Atlantic Signature redacted Thesis Supervisor Accepted by: Thomas Levenson Professor of Science Writing Director, Graduate Program in Science Writing ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First and foremost, I want to thank my parents, Cathy and Andy Jacobs. I'm here because of you. I couldn't have asked for better role models and friends. Your endless support and love keeps me going. I also want to thank my brother, Charlie, for always being just a phone call away. Chatting and joking around with you never failed to relax me when I was feeling stressed or overwhelmed. And of course, Brian Nord, my partner in crime and photographer. You were there for me from the moment I came up with my thesis topic to the final edits. Thank you. To my thesis advisor, Corby Kummer, thank you for your guidance. You kept me focused from day one, when I came to you with enough ideas to fill a book. I also want to thank Marcia Bartusiak and Seth Mnookin for giving me feedback on early drafts of my thesis and the rest of the science writing department - Tom Levenson, Alan Lightman, Phil Hilts and Shannon Larkin - for an unforgettable year. It was a whirlwind, but I learned a lot, wrote a lot and grew a lot as a journalist. Abi, Alix, Emma, Jenny, Julie, Lindsay and Sam, I was lucky to have every one of you by my side through it all. 3 4 The Ruins of Science Whatever Happened to the Tevatron? by Suzanne E. Jacobs Submitted to the Program in Comparative Media Studies/Writing On June 13, 2014 in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Science in Science Writing ABSTRACT The Tevatron was the world's highest energy particle accelerator for more than two decades. Built at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Illinois in the early 1980s, the machine accelerated protons and antiprotons through its 4.26-mile ring of magnets and smashed them together in one of two 5,000 ton detectors that traced and measured the collision debris. Scientists then analyzed the results in search of new fundamental particles or a deeper understanding of existing ones, and in 1995, they discovered the top quark, one of only 17 known fundamental particles in the universe. The discovery made headlines around the world and became the Tevatron's crowning achievement. When the U.S. Department of Energy decided to shut the Tevatron down in 2011 after a more powerful collider began running in Europe, the old machine entered a kind of limbo. Its life in the world of experimental particle physics was over, but there were no plans for its remains. Using the Tevatron as a case study, this thesis asks the fundamental question: what can and should be done with the ruins that lie in the wake of progress? In doing so, it examines a difficult challenge facing today's science and technology museum curators, namely how to preserve the historical and scientific value of important artifacts amid the acceleration of scientific progress and the growing prevalence of big science. Thesis Supervisor: Corby Kummer Title: Senior Editor, The Atlantic 5 6 THE TEVATRON, LEGENDARY PARTICLE COLLIDER, SHUTS DOWN AT 28 October 1, 2011 The most powerful particle collider in the United States and the second most powerful particle collider in the world shut down yesterday. The Tevatron, located about 40 miles west of Chicago near Geneva, IL, was 28 years old. A 4.26-mile ring of more than 1,000 long, boxy magnets lined up end-to-end, the subterranean beast's full expanse was only visible from a bird's eye view. And even then, the nearly perfect circle of raised earth only hinted at the scientific marvel lying below the prairie fields of Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. Scientists built the Tevatron in the early This aerial view of Fermilab reveals the 4.26-mile ring of the 1980s to uncover the fundamental components Tevatron (Fermilab). of our universe. It smashed together protons In 1986 the Illinois Society of and antiprotons moving at nearly the speed of Professional Engineers named the entire light, creating tiny microcosms of Big Bang- machine one of the top 10 engineering like conditions. In one second, millions of achievements of the previous 100 years. these collisions would send showers of particle All in all, the Tevatron left a mark on debris flying through one of two three-story, history comparable to its mark on the Illinois 5000-ton detectors called the Collider Detector prairie. More than 1,000 physicists earned their at Fermilab (CDF) and DZero. PhDs working on the Tevatron, and the To control such energetic particles, the technological advances it spurred paved the Tevatron employed special magnets way for future accelerators. containing superconducting cables that, when The Tevatron's most notable discovery cooled to around negative 450 degrees came in 1995, when scientists announced that Fahrenheit, conducted electric current with amid collision debris, they found the last of a zero resistance, generating extraordinarily group of fundamental particles known as powerful magnetic fields. The demand for so quarks. Quarks are tiny building blocks that many of these cables gave rise to an entire bind together to form particles called hadrons, industry surrounding superconductors, and which include the protons and neutrons in the from that industry sprang MRI technology. nuclei of atoms. In the 1960s, theorists The cryogenic cooling system Fermilab predicted the existence of six types or "flavors" developed to maintain such cold temperatures of quarks that, for various reasons, became was named an International Historic known as up, down, strange, charm, top and Mechanical Engineering Landmark by the bottom quarks. By 1977, all but the top quark American Society of Mechanical Engineers in had graduated from theory to reality through 1993. direct observation. The top quark, it would turn out, was so heavy that only a machine as powerful as the Tevatron could create it. 7 In an interview with the Los Angeles Fermilab scientists would have to leave the Times a few days before the shut-down, Higgs search to the LHC. physicist Giovanni Punzi discussed the Hundreds of people who had worked importance of that discovery. with the Tevatron over the years flocked to "The top quark was crucial because Fermilab from all over this week to say their without it, all of our theories of how subatomic final goodbyes. particles behave wouldn't work," he said. The two detectors were turned off first. "Physicists knew there had to be a sixth quark. Ben Kilminster, one of the scientists who Everybody was puzzled by the fact that we worked on CDF, said a somber goodbye to the couldn't find it. The reason we couldn't find it 12-meter high behemoth. is because its mass was so large that scientists "For many of us, CDF is more than a could not produce it until the Tevatron came machine," Kilminster said. "It's a living along. It was a very long search. If we had not creature that has the superhuman ability to see found the top quark, understanding all of the the microscopic quantum world. So it's going rest of physics would have been a problem." to be with heavy hearts that many of us watch The Tevatron made a whole host of it close its eyes to this world that has captivated contributions to particle physics, and in its last us for so long." few years had turned its attention toward the After the detectors were turned off, Higgs boson, a particle that physicists have Helen Edwards, who was instrumental in been theorizing about for decades. Unsure how building the machine, had the honor of heavy the Higgs will be, Fermilab scientists, powering it down. She also had the burden of like explorers hunting for buried treasure, had ending an era in U.S. particle physics. been systematically testing different collision Over the next week, the Tevatron's energies, hoping to eventually pinpoint the magnets will slowly emerge from their deep right one that would yield the elusive particle. freeze. When they reach room temperature, Finding the Higgs would have solved the Fermilab scientists will remove the cooling biggest mystery in particle physics today and liquids and gases. certainly would have been a fitting sendoff to It's unclear what will happen to the what was the world's highest-energy collider Tevatron's remains. The monstrous corpse is for more than two decades. too big to ship off to a museum and would cost Instead, that search will continue at too much to dismantle. For curators and Europe's Large Hadron Collider (LHC), a 17- historians, this will be a kind of case study in mile ring that's more than twice as powerful as how to deal with the ever increasing size of the Tevatron.