In the Land of Plenty

Lederman then said, "I don't know if we have such a thing as a prairie hat," provoking more laughter. His subse quent speech encouraged his people to keep physics going at Fermilab for another 10 to 15 years. And indeed, Fermilab's program continued to flour ish after Lederman stepped down the following year, and also beyond the 1993 decision of Congress to terminate the Superconducting Super Collider. The Main Injector, an upgrade of the Main Ring accelerator in the early 1990s, led to Fermilab's discovery in 1995 of the top quark, the last of the six quarks. The book draws to a close at that point. But Fermilab's story was not over then; it continues today. Since the discovery of the top quark, the laboratory has continued to pursue a rich program of research in physics. However, the Tevatron will shut down within the next few years. Internation al attention has shifted to the Large Hadron Collider in Europe. Fermilab's long-term future is cur rently unclear, although research con tinues there on questions of neutrino mass, the Higgs boson, supersymmetry and new properties of matter. Ambi tious plans are in the works for new high-intensity beams, for astrophysical initiatives, and for perhaps being the eventual site of the International Linear