Tevatron Has Come To the End of Its Run 115
Med-trump writes "The U.S. government's Chicago-area Fermilab has been at the forefront of high-energy physics. That's in large part thanks to the Tevatron, the machine that first reached the energies needed to discover the last quark in the Standard Model. But the Tevatron has come to the end of its run; at 2pm on Friday, it will be shut down for the last time."
I'll be hoisting a pint... (Score:3, Interesting)
... or two in honor of the Tevatron's long run.
I'm wondering what's going to become of the physicists that work at Fermilab. I know one of them from my college days. He's worked there since graduating in the late '70s, one of the few physics majors I knew that actually found employment doing work in physics. (Many others seemed to go into software development.)
Re:I'll be hoisting a pint... (Score:5, Interesting)
The lab isn't going anywhere. While a few groups are justifiably concerned about their jobs, the overall mood around the lab is optimism. New projects are underway, accelerator research is ongoing, and proposals for new experiments are always in the works.
There's plenty of work left to be done. The real concern going forward is keeping the government willing to spend money on it.