Mighty Tevatron Shuts Down After Decades of Discoveries
The Tevatron was the world’s most powerful particle accelerator and the site of many of the biggest discoveries in the field for more than two decades. It symbolized the United States’ scientific dominance and was the center of the international physics world until it was eclipsed by Europe’s Large Hadron Collider last year.
Today, protons and antiprotons will stop speeding around the 4-mile-long circular accelerator track at Fermilab in Batavia, Illinois, and data from the Tevatron’s final particle collisions will be recorded. The end will be marked by a ceremony to turn the machine off and celebrate the dozens of discoveries it made, broadcast live online at 2 p.m. central time.