Fermilab has asked the general public for suggestions of what to name their next big accelerator--currently known as ProjectX. Deputy Director Young-Kee Kim told the New York Times that Fermilab was accepting suggestions, and since the article ran on October 6, Kim has received over one hundred emailed suggestions. You can send your suggestions to ykkim@fnal.gov, and see a current list of suggestions from readers and physicists here.
In 2011, after the LHC has taken over as the largest operational particle accelerator in the world, Fermilab's Tevatron will shut down after more than three decades of operation. ProjectX will be even larger than the Tevatron, and will utilize some of the old hardware and infrastructure.
We should note that Fermilab is asking for suggestions, but this is not a contest to pick a winner. However, we'd love to see Stephen Colbert get a hold of this naming process as he did with NASA's contest to name a wing of the International Space Station. If you haven't heard, their plan took an unexpected turn when the host of Comedy Central's The Colbert Report, rallied his viewers to write in his name next to the four suggestions put forth by NASA. They did, and it won. NASA agreed to name a $5 million treadmill after Mr. Colbert, but named the wing of the space station Tranquility. The Colbert Collider? It has a ring to it.
Some of my favorites thus far: The Ferminator, The Big Bopper, the Mother of all Particle Colliders, HIPPO (High Intensity Paperwork Production Originator), HULK (Humanitys Ultimate Library of Knowledge), HULK SMASH, and SUP-R-FREQ (Pronounced Super Freak and standing for "superconducting radio frequency").
Kim said that many of the submitters also expressed their appreciation at Fermilab asking the public to participate in the creation of this new accelerator.
