Tevatron countdown. Hopes among particle physicists to extend the life of the proton–antiproton collider at Fermilab through 2014 were dashed on 6 January: “Unfortunately, the current budgetary climate is very challenging and additional funding has not been identified,” wrote William Brinkman, director of the US Department of Energy’s Office of Science, to Melvyn Shochet, chairman of the department’s High-Energy Physics Advisory Panel. So, contrary to the recommendation by a HEPAP subpanel (see PHYSICS TODAY, December 2010, page 34), the Tevatron will be turned off this fall.
Highlights from the Tevatron include the discovery of the top quark in 1995, the observation in 2006 that B mesons oscillate, and the indications last year that B-meson decays produce slightly more muons than antimuons, which may help explain the dominance of matter over antimatter. In addition, a large range of mass was excluded for the elusive Higgs boson, which recently has seemed...
