At Particle Lab, a Tantalizing Glimpse Has Physicists Holding Their Breaths

This stood out to me:<p>"a spectacular last hurrah for Fermilab’s Tevatron, once the world’s most powerful particle accelerator and now slated to go dark forever in September or earlier, whenever Fermilab runs out of money to operate it."<p>I don't know the backstory here, so I won't jump to conclusions. Is there a reason besides lack of funds for shutting this place down?

Ex particle-physicist here. Extremely unlikely to be a new force of nature, given the energies that the Tevatron operates at we'd have seen some evidence for this before - and nothing has ever suggested there might be something like this in addition to the fundamental 4. And whilst there might be wild speculation in the press as to what this might be, the research group(s) at Tevatron will certainly know. Given that one of the Tevatron's big hopes was to trump the LHC with a signature for the Higgs it could be something along these things, which would be fantastic. Although it's probably likely to be something more mundane.

Which is the paper mentioned in the article?<p><a href="http://arxiv.org/find/all/1/all:+Punzi/0/1/0/all/0/1" rel="nofollow">http://arxiv.org/find/all/1/all:+Punzi/0/1/0/all/0/1</a><p><a href="http://arxiv.org/find/all/1/all:+AND+punzi+lett/0/1/0/all/0/1" rel="nofollow">http://arxiv.org/find/all/1/all:+AND+punzi+lett/0/1/0/all/0/...</a>

I hope the new force in nature is not this: "Fermilab’s Tevatron [...] now slated to go dark forever in September or earlier, whenever Fermilab runs out of money to operate it"

These Particle Accelerators should not be wasted or scrapped! This process could be used to study materials, which could lead to advances in: temperature limits, strength, etc...