Well, for one thing, it's now PEP-II, crankng out millions of B mesons.
Pretty cool stuff.
"The B-Factory facility, PEP-II and BABAR, will pursue a broad agenda of
physics involving the heavy quark and heavy lepton sector. At full
luminosity, PEP-II will produce about 1E8 b and c quarks, and roughly the
same number of tau's per year.
"In particular, the B-Factory will pursue the question of why we live in a
matter-dominated Universe. At the beginning of the Big Bang, matter and
anti-matter were produced in equal amounts -- what tipped the balance in
favor of matter? Understanding the mechanism is crucial if we are to have a
full understanding of the evolution of our Universe. A small imbalance in
the matter to anti-matter ratio at primordial times, one part in about 1E9,
would suffice. In such a situation, all the matter and anti-matter, except
the tiny unpaired excess, would have annihilated to form photons (which we
can detect now). The unpaired excess, all matter, evolved to form the
Universe.
"To substantiate this paradigm, we need experimental evidence that
conclusively establishes the mechanism responsible for creating the tiny
matter excess. There are several competing theoretical models for this
mechanism. The main role for the B-Factory will be to make a broad set of
measurements capable of confronting the crucial question of what happened to
all the anti-matter. It is fascinating to realize that with the B-Factory,
we will be able to confront crucial physics issues which took place less
than 1E-34 seconds after the start of the Big Bang."
-- from http://www.slac.stanford.edu/accel/pepii/home.html
More info about BABAR: http://heplibw3.slac.stanford.edu/BFROOT/ (note that
my mom, Barbara Barrera, is the BABAR group admin -- is that enough BAs and
BARs for you? :-)
- Joe