The final magnet has been installed in the Main Injector at the Tevatron particle accelerator at Fermilab in the US. The Tevatron is the world's most powerful accelerator and the new Main Injector will increase its collision luminosity by a factor of 5. The six-year upgrade cost the Department of Energy, which runs the laboratory, $299 million.
The Main Injector has a circumference of 3.2 km and contains 432 magnets, each of which weighs over 18 tonnes. The Tevatron itself has a circumference of 6.3km and collides protons and antiprotons at a centre-of-mass energy of nearly two trillion electron volts (2 TeV). “Fermilab’s new Main Injector will open up extraordinary new opportunities for discovery in this basic field of research, not only for scientists from the United States but for the international physics community” said DOE boss Bill Richardson, who fixed the last magnet into place. The upgraded Tevatron is scheduled to come online early next year.
