Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab), physical science research center located near Batavia, Ill., est. 1968 as the National Accelerator Laboratory, renamed 1974 in honor of Enrico Fermi. It was built on the site of the former village of Weston. Universities Research Association operates it under contract to the U.S. Dept. of Energy. Work at Fermilab is devoted to the study of the fundamental nature of matter and energy through basic research on elementary particles. From 1983 to 2011, the principal device used in this study was the Tevatron, a synchrotron particle accelerator capable of accelerating protons and antiprotons up to energies of 980 billion electron-volts. Fermilab discovered the bottom quark (1977) and top quark (1995).
The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2024, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.
See more Encyclopedia articles on: Physics
