Why The Tevatron Will Never Die: Q&A

Fermilab's Tevatron collider will power down this afternoon after nearly three decades of subatomic particle collisions. You can live stream the main control room shutdown here.

Late last spring, Motherboard caught up with Rob Roser, spokesman for the Collider Detector at Fermilab. A self-proclaimed "science whore" – he said he'll go to wherever science is happening – Roser touched on the Tevatron's biggest contributions, the fate of researchers at either CDF or its companion experiment, DZero, and why the U.S. must remain dominant in the Big Science game. (Stay tuned for a Motherboard documentary about the lab.)

What has the Tevatron done for science?

The Tevatron has done an awful lot of good. We've developed accelerator technologies that are used in the LHC, we've trained in excess of 500 Ph.D's in the field, and we've developed advanced analysis techniques and improved the sophistication of our computer modeling.

On top of that we've published over 800 physics papers over the last eight years and made a number of significant contributions to the science, not the least of which are the Higgs limits we've developed so far.

Who's been using the Tevatron? And how will they manage to move to other fields after the experiment is done? We have 60 universities that are on the experiment, and the faculty effectively all have their foot in two different camps.

They're all still engaged in the Tevatron at some level but they're all also working on the LHC. So they will just shift their focus from whatever it is – 70/30, 60/40, 80/20 – to 100% LHC, 0% Tevatron. It affects them minimally. It affects their travel schedules but not their research.

Why do we need big science in this country? Why do we need this kind of science research?

Any society, once it gets to the level where it meets its basic needs – it can provide food for its members and shelter and those sorts of things – the next thing mankind has done is ask the simple question why. Why does the world work the way it does?

This fundamental science goes out and tries to answer that question. I can't tell you explicitly what the next thing we're going to discover is and its impact per say on society 30 years from now. I can look back on other fundamental science research on what I do and tell you that it has had tremendous effects on society.

You know, anything from GPS to the World Wide Web to accelerators that are used in all sorts of applications to MRIs. A whole spread of things followed from what we do.

So what will this country be losing when Fermilab closes the Tevatron?

It depends on what it does, right? This is very big science, so you can't hold onto the leadership indefinitely, right?

Before the Tevatron, there were other accelerators in Europe that were heading up the game, and then there was the Tevatron. It's a natural migration to move back to Europe, and then the real question is does the United States want to regain or recapture that in a future machine? And can the Europeans contribute to it in the way we have contributed to their machines? If that happens, then I'm not worried at all. You just have to take turns and share the cost and the burden of hosting these facilities over time. If the desire is to not do that, then I get very nervous.

Can you make a case right now that big science is worth the money that it will cost to continue doing it?

I try to do that every day. I think we can make the case.

There's still recognition out there that this is important to do. It may not happen as fast as I want, and you learn to be patient in this field. But it's still there, and I think that the enthusiasm or the acknowledgment that fundamental science research at all levels – not just Fermilab, but the eight other national laboratories that do other things – is important.

I forget who said it, but Fermilab isn't going to help you defend the country but it makes the country worth defending. And that's true.

By Brian Anderson and Lara Heintz. Interview by Alex Pasternack

CONNECTIONS

• Megascience Blues: What The Death of America's Biggest Particle Accelerator Means
• Goodbye Tevatron, the U.S.'s Largest Particle Accelerator
• Fermilab Closes In On The Higgs Boson