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22-02-09 Fermilab,European accelerator race for glory

So,does the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory's Tevatron accelerator have a shot against the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland? It may not be the question all the boys at the end of bar are asking — but it gets particle physicists psyched.After all,they're racing to find evidence of a hypothetical particle called the Higgs boson,better known as the "God Particle" because it is believed to give mass to the matter that makes up the universe."This has been the holy grail of high energy physics for the last 30 years," Joe Lykken,a senior scientist at Fermilab in the Chicago suburb of Batavia, said Wednesday.Just months ago,it appeared that evidence of the Higgs would be found by scientists at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) manning the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) — not those at Fermilab.The idea that Fermilab could pull ahead seemed about as likely as a Model T beating a Corvette in a drag race."People laughed at the idea of (Fermilab) finding the Higgs," Lykken said. "Our accelerator was not built to find the Higgs."The LHC was.It's the world's largest atom smasher,far more powerful than the Tevatron.It kicked off with an impressive show of force in September,when beams of protons were fired at nearly the speed of light — first in a clockwise direction and then counterclockwise.But just more than a week later,the LHC was shut down because of major damage blamed on a faulty wiring splice that caused an electrical arc.This month,the operator said repairs and additional safety features will keep it from firing up again until the end of September