Word: tevatron
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...machine the most complex accelerator ever built had really been well spent. In the months ahead, it will gradually be boosted to 800 GeV and perhaps by next year to a trillion electron volts (TeV). At full operating power, the device will not only live up to its name, Tevatron (from the Greek teras, or monster, a scientific symbol for a trillion), but will also put the U.S. back in the forefront of high-energy physics. Says Fermilab Director Leon Lederman: "The Tevatron is a leapfrog. If we hadn't done it, our program would have been seriously compromised...
...ancient Greeks needed only their powerful intellects and imaginations to postulate atoms as the basic building blocks of matter. Today, more than ever before, such exploration requires complicated machines like Fermilab's Tevatron. By pummeling the nucleus, the atom's central mass, with protons or other subatomic particles, physicists can literally tear apart the fabric of matter, somewhat like peeling layers from an onion. Every peel, however, requires increasingly powerful and costlier machines. As Stanford Physicist Wolfgang Panofsky notes, "The smaller the objects, the bigger the microscope we must use to see them...