The LHC suffered a malfunction just nine days after
it was switched on.
They say you can't teach an old dog new tricks.
But on the other hand, they also say you can't keep a good dog down.
Just a few years ago, the science community was getting ready to write off Fermilab's aging particle accelerator as old, obsolete and about to outlive its usefulness. The venerable Tevatron was looking a little long in the teeth, and it seemed that its glory days of discovering new quarks and baryons were soon to be over. Batavia Illinois would no longer be at the epicenter of high energy particle physics research.
There was a new big dog coming to town. CERN's Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland would be bigger, faster and meaner than anything that came before. It could accelerate particles seven times faster than the Tevatron, with more sensitive instruments that would make a cakewalk out of detecting the Higgs boson, the theorized particle that gives matter its mass.
The LHC started up in September last year. Less than one month later it got sick, sick as a dog. A liquid helium leak knocked out a cluster of its high powered superconducting magnets. The particle accelerator has been shut down while repairs continue into the fall.
Not willing to let a sleeping dog lie, Fermilab soon jumped on the opportunity before it. Scientists at the Illinois facility announced two weeks ago that they thought they had a 50 to 90 percent chance of discovering the elusive particle before the LHC was back on line. Fermilab's team, having been bumped from top dog to underdog is now working furiously for their spot of glory.
Just this last week, Fermilab announced they observed a single top quark. Top quarks are usually formed in pairs from the strong nuclear force. Once in about 20 billion collisions, one forms out of the weak nuclear force paired with a different quark. Being able to detect this rare of an event is a good sign to be the first to find the Higgs boson.
The two teams are now working like dogs to find the particle first because deep down, every dog wants to have his day.
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