The Tevatron, which was the world's highest energy particle collider from 1985 until December 2009 will be switched off by October 2011.

Sad news today that the proton-antiproton collider at Fermilab in Chicago will not have its life extended for another three years, and will therefore stop operation by October 2011. HEPAP, the senior scientific panel for particle physics in the US, had recommended that extra funding should be found to run it, but it seems the money will not be available.

The Tevatron, at Fermilab, Chicago. (Courtesy Fermilab Visual Media Services, via interactions.org)



The Tevatron has had a long and illustrious career. It found the heaviest fundamental particle we know of - the top quark. It measured matter-antimatter asymmetry in processes where it had never been seen before, it made the most precise measurements of the mass W boson (which carries the weak nuclear force) and much more besides. If you try and imagine particle physics without data from the Tevatron, there are a lot of very big gaps.

It would certainly have contributed further to the hunt for the Higgs boson had it continued running.

My friend Mark Lancaster, who has led the UK bit of CDF for many years, said:

A sad day but we've had a good innings - we've taken data for over 25 years and published over 500 papers - many of these are landmarks in the field - the discovery of the top quark, B s oscillations and many measurements that will live into, and many beyond, the LHC era. We're not done with the Higgs yet either! I hope the LHC has the same success and longevity - if so the next few years will be very exciting.

There have been false alarms before

but this time it seems it is for real.

The effort involved in getting large machines like this running and performing well makes it heartbreaking to switch them off when you know that they could do more great science. Regardless of previous successes and the acknowledged need for prioritisation, this keeps going through my head. The lyric is doubly inappropriate, because I do mind. At least the weird Peter Cook intro cheered me up.

I remember agonies when LEP was closed in order to start installing the Large Hadron Collider. I hope Fermilab finds a future at least as exciting and successful.

PS Here an official announcement from the lab director.