3mm Inexpensive Chip Revolutionizes Electron Accelerators

Posted by samzenpus on Sunday September 29, 2013 @05:55PM from the greased-lightning dept.

AaronW writes "Scientists and engineers at the US DOE SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and Stanford University have developed an advanced accelerator technology smaller than a grain of rice. It is currently accelerating electrons at 300 million volts per meter with a goal of achieving 1 billion EV per meter. It could do in 100 feet what the SLAC linear accelerator does in two miles and could achieve a million more electron pulses per second. This could lead to more compact accelerators and X-ray devices."

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Re:so we wasted a shit load of money on colliders? by Anonymous Coward · 2013-09-29 18:34 · Score: 5, Insightful

Exactly! Just look at the powerful computers we have right now. We clearly shouldn't have wasted all the money on mechanical and tube computers and just waited until we got i7s. In fact, fuck it; let's stop all investment now and wait another fifty years when we'll have 512-core pocket computers.