Revived collider seeks physics firsts.The world's highest-energy particle accelerator particle accelerator, apparatus used in nuclear physics to produce beams of energetic charged particles and to direct them against various targets. Such machines, popularly called atom smashers, are needed to observe objects as small as the atomic nucleus in studies has fired up again after a 3-year shutdown. Newly completed renovations, which began 8 years ago, are expected to boost by a factor of 10 the number of proton-antiproton collisions produced in the Tevatron at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab), physical science research center located near Batavia, Ill., est. 1968 as the National Accelerator Laboratory, renamed 1974 in honor of Enrico Fermi. It was built on the site of the former village of Weston. in Batavia, Ill. (SN: 7/1/95, p. 10). To upgrade the Tevatron, Fermilab built a new, $260 million, subordinate accelerator, known as the Main Injector, that's 2 miles in circumference. It creates four times as many antiprotons to feed to the main Tevatron ring as did its predecessor accelerator. Energy Secretary Bill Richardson  This article or section contains information about one or more candidates in an upcoming or ongoing election.Content may change as the election approaches. and other dignitaries dedicated the new injector on June 1. Extensive overhauls of the Tevatron ring's two main detectors--to be completed by early next year--will wring more information from the higher collision rate. Altogether, these upgrades should open up new realms of physics to experimental exploration, Fermilab scientists say. The improvements will "make us really the world center for physics" until roughly 2006, says Joseph Lykken Joseph Lykken (born June 17, 1957) is a theoretical physicist at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. He received his Ph.D. in 1982 from M.I.T. In 1996 Lykken proposed "weak scale superstrings," which posited extra dimensions of space within the reach of particle of Fermilab. That's when the Large Hadron Collider This article or section contains information about an expected future scientific facility. It is likely to contain information of a speculative nature and the content may change as the facility approaches completion. , an accelerator now being built in Switzerland, is slated to start up. Until then, the renovated Tevatron will have first shot at such prizes as the long-sought Higgs boson boson: see elementary particles; Bose-Einstein statistics. boson Subatomic particle with integral spin that is governed by Bose-Einstein statistics. and so-called supersymmetric particles, he says. Finding the Higgs particle may solve the mystery of why matter has mass. Supersymmetric particles might reveal hidden links between the particles that carry forces and those that make up matter. |
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