The Recycling of the Tevatron 71
ananyo writes with an excerpt from an article in Nature about the decomissioning of the Tevatron: "It is a 4,000-tonne edifice that stands three stories high, chock full of particle detectors, power supplies, electronics and photomultiplier tubes, all layered like a giant onion around a cylindrical magnet. During 26 years of operation at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Illinois, this behemoth, the Collider Detector at Fermilab (CDF), helped to find the top quark and chased the Higgs boson. But since the lab's flagship particle collider, the Tevatron, was switched off in September 2011, the detector has been surplus stock — and it is now slowly being cannibalized for parts."
Currently other projects are taking small bits and pieces of the Tevatron, but another Fermilab project, ORKA, wants to gut the collider to study kaon decay.
DIY black hole (Score:3, Funny)
Put it on eBay: "Create your own black hole!" Starting bid: $1 (no reserve)
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Great! I live next door. (Seriously)
Uh, Ok? (Score:1)
I'm confused why this is news. Can I buy the parts or something? What does it matter if they're selling the parts.
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I'm confused why this is news. Can I buy the parts or something? What does it matter if they're selling the parts.
Woah! So it's not news or interesting unless you are *directly* affected? Generation Me [wikipedia.org] or what, dude? They're taking apart one of your nation's national treasures. Bits of it are being recommissioned because your physicists are broke. It's OK, you're right. Let's leave this "peer into the fabric of the universe and wonder at its awesomeness" stuff up to the Europeans. They'll have the Higgs by the end of the year anyway.
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I would say the two primary criteria for 'what is news' are, "Will it affect me?" or "Is it something I can and should do something about?" Not necessarily directly - e.g. voting isn't generally a direct effect. If the story doesn't include one of these, then it's really not news, it's gossip or titillation.
Unfortunately nearly all 'news' these days is sex, car crashes or celebrity gossip - pandering to the biological drives.
On a related note, I finally understood the attraction of the gossip rags at the
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Re: Monkey Juice Economics (Score:2)
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Sorry, it was a while back and I don't recall the particulars. But it appears that you're on the right track.
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Yea, cause Europe totally doesnt have financial difficulties. Portugal, Ireland, Greece, Italy, all doing wonderful.
Something about "glass houses" and "throwing stones"...?
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yes, but their collective situation and yet their continuing commitment to science makes this even more telling for the Americans, no?
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IMHO it is. If I take a used carburetor out of a wrecked car, and put it on my that needs a replacement, isn't that recycling?
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Re:That's not recycling; it's reusing! (Score:4, Informative)
You know the three Rs of waste reduction? "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle", you and the GP are both talking about reusing. It's not the same as recycling, in fact it's better because it's more efficient.
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Right. The point of "reduce, reuse, recycle" is to help people keep in mind it's better to recycle by using something than it is to recycle by throwing it in the recycle bin.
So in that context it makes sense to distinguish.
But that usage does not define the terms in all cases.
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No, they're not being pedantic, you're being ignorant. Recycle != reuse. If you're using them as synonyms you're using them wrong. Read what they told you and learn, rather than trying to defend your own ignorance.
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If Alice says "I reused a carburetor from a wrecked car" it means she took a carburetor from a wrecked car and used it, as a carburetor, in another car.
If Bob says "I recycled a carburetor from a wrecked car" it means he took a carburetor from a wrecked car, destroyed it, and used the raw materials to make something new.
https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=reuse+vs+recycle [google.co.uk]
www.care2.com/greenliving/why-reuse-beats-recycling.html
Does it really matter? (Score:2)
Recycling is breaking something down into component materials and re-fabricating those materials into new things. Unplugging a tube and plugging it in somewhere else isn't recycling. Still, it conserves natural resources, so what the hey.
Parts that are not being used, are being transferred to active research projects saving a lot of money. This is a very good thing. Why are we splitting hairs on this?
Science fiction movie (Score:1)
Sounds like a great set for filming some sci fi - like they used to make movies when tearing down amusement parks and blowing up the roller coaster.
Minimal saving grace? (Score:5, Insightful)
The lack of funding for the Tevatron is deeply unfortunate. It almost certainly could still have been used for good research. Between this and the earlier cancellation of the SSC, the US seems to be doing its hardest to make sure that it isn't first in particle physics research. We're still doing a lot of good research at Fermilab. For example, MINOS is working on testing the recent FTL neutrino claim (and in fact, the OPERA group was paying careful attention to arrival times primarily because MINOS had previously discovered an anomaly which tentatively suggested that some neutrinos might be traveling faster than light). And the US is still doing very good physics in other areas, especially in solid state physics and plasma physics. But this a really bad trend. It fits into the same pattern as the recent budget cuts to Mars exploration, while we still have billions of dollars pumping into military boondoggles.
I'm happy that they can at least reuse the Tevatron, and kaon decay which is important for understanding CP violation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CP_violation [wikipedia.org] which may have implications for why there's apparently so much more matter than antimatter in the universe. But it really shouldn't be coming to this. Physicists shouldn't be desperately scrambling for parts while the cost of what they need is less than a new fighter squadron.
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the US seems to be doing its hardest to make sure that it isn't first in particle physics research.
In all fairness, we're also abandoning a lot of other areas of scientific research too.
Wanna buy a space shuttle? We can cut you a deal.
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don't forget "green" corn ethanol...
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Science has pretty much always involved scrambling for parts not least because a lot of stuff needed is a one off. Jodrell Bank Observatory for example was built with a lot of former military kit including bits of battleship turret. Scavenging stuff from previous experiments is a pretty standard skill across the sciences.
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Remember that culturally, the US no longer wants to be a special, leading country. The current administration has stated it, and is taking steps to ensure it.
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wow, turning it into GOP v Democrats, are we?
it really can be worked into any discussion, can't it?
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The fact that the GOP maintains a platform which is explicitly anti-science is relevant to any discussion about science, particularly any research which is publicly funded and doesn't directly benefit large corporations.
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It's hard to get funding when you're not a) blowing stuff up or b) concerned that others are trying to blow your stuff up. Sad.
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If the US government took the money they are spending on unnecessary and unneeded military projects like the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter and on maintaining expensive-to-run military bases in places like Okinawa and spent it on things that benefit mankind instead, the world would be a far better place.
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How do we know there's more matter than anti-matter? It's obvious that there's more matter than anti-matter near us, but how do we know we're not just an island of matter in a sea of anti-matter?
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Cost? (Score:2)
Well that depends using "a new fighter squadron" as a metric of measurement...
Lets see to convert, apparently there are 16 fighters in a US fighter squadron. "New", would have to refer to the new F35 fighter jets being built, the cheapest of which is estimated to cost about 122$ million dollars.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_F-35_Lightning_II [wikipedia.org]
So some rough calculations mean those poor scientists only need 1952 Million dollars, or in general terms about 2 Billion! :)
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well played, sir.
whoever modded this down is a nincompoop.
US physics decline parallels the space program (Score:3)
the US space program can no longer launch astronauts into orbit. Earliest will be next decade. Space probes have been cut to the two in development with nothing beyond that funded.
Comment removed (Score:4, Funny)
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Well, you are big on gay rights though, yes.
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Geeks never throw away old tech stuff (Score:3)
They always say, "Maybe I'll need it someday . . . ", or "I might be able to scavenge some parts . . ."
And the stuff just sits around forever . . . right next to my Token Ring network card, tangled up in cables with wacky connectors . . .
They just can't part with the Tevatron . . . this recycling line is just an excuse to keep it around.
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That's what really goes through our minds when trying to toss out old technology.
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Assuming you would want to, it is non-trivial to just dispose of 4 miles of superconducting magnets.
Anyways, the part of the Tevatron that you are most likely to find reuse is the 4 miles of tunnel. The civil construction to dig a tunnel that big, complete with tunnel penetrations and service buildings is a significant portion of the cost of any project. You would be a fool to just fill in such a valu
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Anyways, the part of the Tevatron that you are most likely to find reuse is the 4 miles of tunnel. The civil construction to dig a tunnel that big, complete with tunnel penetrations and service buildings is a significant portion of the cost of any project. You would be a fool to just fill in such a valuable commodity just because you don't have a use of it today.
What uses are there for 4 miles of tunnel that's in some random location not in an urban center? Not much. Just like there's not much use for the 14 mi of tunnel dug for the SSC, which lies unused in Texas.
It would be foolish to fill it in, that's true. Which is why they won't. They'll just leave the tunnel there. Maybe in the future someone will use it to build a new colllider (the LHC used pre-existing tunnels from a previous collider, but other than that...
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I think the Tevatron is the second most powerful accelerator on the planet in terms of collision energies. Cern has way outclassed it in collision energies, but it's still a world class piece of equipment. The Stanford Linear accelerator (SLAC) made a great electron source, for a collaminated X ray source. I think it's by far the brightest in the world, enabling experiments that can be done no where else. What could be done with the Tevatron? It's a shame not to use it somehow.
Looking at the diagram in the article, it looks like the particle source and the initial accelerator/storage ring is still live, they plan to use it for some kind of neutrino experiments. The main ring and detectors are what's being gutted AFAIK (which isn't saying much).
TOURS! (Score:3, Interesting)
Meth heads (Score:3)
Since it's in a rural area, I bet if the word got out, the meth heads would be all over it to steal the copper. It would end up looking like one of those old abandoned military sites in Russia.
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Yeah, cause meth heads won't get stopped by the 24hr security guards at each entrance or stopped by security near the restricted access roads. It's not abandoned, just off.
They do have buffalo on the grounds that you can go see, but they warn you at the gate that you can't just go anywhere.
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Since it's in a rural area, I bet if the word got out, the meth heads would be all over it to steal the copper. It would end up looking like one of those old abandoned military sites in Russia.
Rural? It's in the middle (well, western side) of the Chicago burbs! Within a mile or so of the ring it's farmland, but beyond that you're in a very heavily populated area. This is not on the outskirts of Pontiac, IL or something.
http://g.co/maps/kw2x9 [g.co]