During a run, the detector operates almost continuously, stopping only occasionally for maintenance. Physicists take turns working three eight-hour shifts a day to monitor the data as it comes in and to make sure nothing goes wrong. Once the data taken from the detector has been stored onto magnetic tape, the physicists try to reconstruct the events that took place from the digitized signals that were actually recorded. We're trying to make sure that even the unexpected is caught. Since the search for the top quark began over a decade ago, scientists have become awed by what the evidence has revealed about what in theory at least surely ranks as one of nature's most bizarre creations.
Scientists now believe that the top quark's mass is about equal to that of an atom of gold.
If so, this would make the top quark by far the heaviest of all fundamental particles. Some physicists believe that because of its improbably large mass, the top quark must be connected in some way to the mechanism that causes mass. Investigating that mechanism, say high-energy physicists, could open the door to a whole new era of physics. While the thought of forging new paths in high-energy physics is pretty heady stuff, physicists remain plagued by an inability to communicate the importance of such basic research to the public. But some physicists feel that not all of their colleagues are this candid, that they tell the public what they think it wants to hear just to win funding for their research.