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. “For the last 28 years, the Tevatron has been the
real workhorse of particle physics,” said physicist Paul Halpern
of the University of the Sciences in Philadelphia and author of
the book Collider. Without it, physicists would have a large gap
in their knowledge of the universe, he added. Over the course of
its life, the Tevatron ha