Collision at 1.8 TeV.

Collision at 1.8 TeV

The deeper physicists wish to probethe structure of matter, and the smaller and finer the details they wish to discuss, the greater is the energy they must expend to get there. This month the Tevatron at the Fermi national Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Ill. (SN: 3/22/86, p.180) began to do physics experiments in which protons and antiprotons strike each other head-on, putting a total energy of 1.8 trillion electron-volts (1.8 TeV) at the disposal of physicists. This is the highest energy of any physics experiment in the world and three times that available at the nearest competitor, the CERN laboratory in Geneva, Switzerland.

In a very sophisticated way, the experimentis the equivalent of throwing proton and antiproton together so that they break up into whatever is inside them. Those insides then combine with each other in a multitude of ways, producing many kinds of particles, which will give physicists insights into fundamental structures and processes on the finest level yet attained. The results of the collisions are recorded by a huge new detector.

The Tevatron is likely to be the highest-energyphysics laboratory until sometime in the 1990s, when the Superconducting Super Collider (see p.84) begins to operate.