The Collider Detector at Fermilab, CDF for insiders, is the longest lasting physics experiment ever (yes, I know about the pitch drop and no, I do not consider that a physics experiment). Designed in 1979, it was assembled in the early eighties, and operated since 1985 to 2011. Now, in two weeks it will stop data taking, and soon will be decommissioned.
Sad story, because CDF has made history in a number of ways -maybe the most recognizable one being the discovery of the top quark, in 1994 (yes, I am being politically incorrect -that was "only" an evidence, strictly speaking; however nobody really doubted that those seven events we had in the lepton plus jets final state were anything else than top pair production, and the mass measurement was M=174 GeV -less than one GeV from the most precise measurements now available!).
The CDF collaboration published over 550 scientific papers in the course of its illustrious life. Many of them groundbreaking ones - a list does not belong here, and will be the subject of a future article.
To celebrate the impressive achievements of CDF, one way (quite american-style) is to produce a t-shirt. See below the design:
You can get your own as well, no matter if you're not a physicist. Just go to this site and help yourself.
