(Image source: Chicago Sun Times)

BY STEVEN SPARKMAN

ANCHOR BLAKE HANSON

The United States has shut down its biggest particle physics experiment. The Tevatron first roared to life in 1983 and spent the next 28 years smashing particles together at just under the speed of light.

In a webcast from Fermilab on Friday, the 4-mile ring saw its last collision.

“As you could see on the red display, the line has gone to zero. So there’s no longer any colliding beams of protons and antiprotons in the Tevatron."

For the physics community, it was a bittersweet moment as they celebrated the long-running experiment. Scientists compared it to pulling the plug on a loved one. The Washington Post gives a brief rundown of Tevatron’s achievements.

“...the Tevatron discovered three of the 17 particles thought fundamental to the universe. It became a prime training ground for two generations of young physicists. And in 1995, it bagged its biggest success, finding a subatomic particle called the top quark, the last of six fundamental building blocks of matter to be discovered.”

The experiment has yielded enough data to keep physicists crunching the numbers for three years, but there will be no new collisions to study. At least not in America. Voice of America has Fermilab’s current director Pier Oddone speaking about the flow of cutting-edge research from the United States to Geneva, Switzerland.

“In this last two decades, that has shifted, where the facility in Geneva went ahead and built this formidable machine, that we were trying to build in Texas called the Superconducting Supercolider. We closed ours, but the Europeans went ahead with theirs. And that’s what has lead to this differentiation now in the level of funding of these two laboratories.”

The shutdown followed just a few months behind the retiring of the space shuttle program. It has many, like a writer for Discovery News, asking: does this signal the end of “big science” in the United States?

“...I don't know any physicist who begrudges the passing of the worlds-highest-energy torch to the Large Hadron Collider. What's different this time around is that there is no US-based machine waiting in the wings to take its turn. Good physics will continue to be done, but America has largely ceded its leadership role in particle physics.”

A writer for io9 laments what she sees as a lack of appreciation for science in the U.S, where austerity economics isn’t putting value on long-term progress.

“We seem to have lost our sense that science, just for the sake of science, adds something unique and valuable to society, beyond the technological advances that it enables. The emphasis these days is always on, ‘Well, what is it good for?’”

One final thought, this time from way back in 1969. At a Congressional meeting, Fermilab Director Robert R. Wilson was asked how the machine that would become Tevatron would keep the nation secure, particularly from the Russians.

He responded: “It only has to do with the respect with which we regard one another, the dignity of men, our love of culture. It has to do with those things. It has nothing to do with the military... In that sense, this new knowledge has all to do with honor and country but it has nothing to do directly with defending our country, except to make it worth defending.”