What To Do With A Soon-To-Be-Obselete Accelerator?

With the impending start of the LHC, the Tevatron days are numbered once again unless news experiments can be thought of and funded for it. This article examines the fate of the Tevatron after the LHC takes the crown as the highest energy particle collider.

Currently, the Tevatron will keep running experiments through the end of September 2010 (the end of the Department of Energy's fiscal year), and possibly through 2011, Holmes said.

After that, it will likely go into "standby mode" for about two years -- shut down but kept in working order. Holmes expects a decision by 2013 on whether to keep the Tevatron or get rid of it.

"It'll largely depend on whether somebody has some good idea for mounting a new experiment in the Tevatron," Holmes said.

I'm guessing that even Project X would not make use of the Tevatron, and even in the best case scenario that the ILC gets built at Fermilab, the Tevatron wouldn't still be needed.

Zz.