The Tevatron, the particle collider that has been smashing together subatomic particles in Illinois since 1983, will be shut down by late 2011.

The Large Hadron Collider in Geneva does the same thing, only 7 times faster, and so the Tevaton has lost funding ($50 million per year) from the Department of Energy, according to the New York Times.

It's sad for everyone except Wall Street.

For everyone else it means:

We're losing some of our science edge to Europe

1,200 physicists are out of a job

Particle physics might not be advanced as soon as everyone hoped

We might be at least one step further away from understanding the big stuff, like how the world works

For Wall Street it means that 1,200 physicists, aka potential quant material, are available for hire.

And as someone pointed out in a letter to the editor, Wall Street loves hiring quants!