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New Particle Collider Is One Foot Long
Jason Koebler writes The CERN particle collider is 17 miles long. China just announced a supercollider that is supposed to be roughly 49 miles long. The United States' new particle collider is just under 12 inches long. What the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory's new collider lacks in size, it makes up for by using plasma to accelerate particles more than 500 times faster than traditional methods. In a recent test published in Nature, Michael Litos and his team were able to accelerate bunches of electrons to near the speed of light within the tiny chamber."
i'm so confused.
Plasma can be amusing, but in the end is no substitute. Size matters. Ask any woman.
Humorbot 5.0: So I said, "My particle collider is 12 inches long." [audience laughs]
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12 inches.... still more than enough for anyone!
Who says size matters?
That's half the size of my penis.
If you read the article (damn you, paywall!) you note that this is essentially an afterburner, and does not start with stationary electrons. In this particular instance it requires a 2 km linear accelerator before the 12 inch magic booster box. 20 GeV electrons are accelerated by a further 1.6 GeV. Still interesting research, but definitely not what is claimed in the summary (surprise).
I hope we at least got the lift kit
Here's a tabletop particle accelerator in Scientific American's Amateur Scientist column in 1959: http://www.sciencemadness.org/... And in the Sept 1953 issue, an account of some high school students in El Cerrito who built a cyclotron.
Actually, it is the accelaration module that is 1 foot long. It is not a collider, it is an accelerator a collider would be at least two feet long and in reality would have more than one acceleration module.
Achille Talon
Hop!
I am peripherally involved in the SLAC plasma wakefield accelerator described in the article.
It provides a very high energy gain in a short distance, but needs to be driven by a high energy drive beam. The present design uses a 20GeV drive beam (using part of the old high energy physics accelerator).The required drive beam energy could be reduced to ~10GeV but probably not a whole lot lower. So this is a way to build a relatively short very high energy accelerator, but not a way to build a very short low-medium energy machine.
Other labs are working on laser driven plasma accelerators that do not need to start with a high energy beam, but do need an enormous laser system and are presently limited to much lower average beam powers .
Plasmas are very promising for future accelerators and there was some excellent work done at SLAC as well as laser / plasma accelerators at other labs. There is still a lot to do. There are issues with staging multiple plasma cells to get high energies, beam quality and stability issues etc.
Your old desktop CRT would accelerate electrons to a reasonable fraction of c. A good accelerator will keep pushing the particles ever closer to the unobtainable speed of light so that they gain more and more mass. Physicists sometimes joke that their accelerators should really be called "ponderators".
But, as others have already said, the summary sucks.
It is not the size, its the momentum.
insisting that big accelerators like Cern and the SSC were the only to go are in this thread ?
People will joke about large hardon colliders with this story about 1 foot long colliders, that's for sure.
So were they possibly working off a napkin sketch, a la ST's Stonehenge?
...with a 12" particle collider and a tiny scientist.
Gotcher 11.9 inches right here.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Nonsense, if YOU personally caused the rise of feminism, my ex-wife would clearly be wrong, and of course that's impossible.
Who is John Cabal?
That must be great for hunting all the really really tiny sub particles
And no one has mentioned outfitting these on friggen sharks yet?
Dark skinned comedian: "What's 12 inches long and white? ... Nuthin'!"
"What the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory's new collider lacks in size, it makes up for by using plasma to accelerate particles more than 500 times faster than traditional methods."
Isn’t that dangerous?
Reminds me of the joke, "My dick is 12 inchs long, but I don't use it as a rule"
No need to feel inferior; it turns out twelve inches is more than enough to satisfy Dame Nature.
First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. Then you win. -Gandhi
They've just created a rail gun... with very small bullets.
*pew* *pew* ... frickin' ray guns!!
Now, bring me some sharks!
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Electrons travel at nearly the speed of light already at very low energies. I don't understand why people keep comparing to the speed of light, because getting to 99.99% of the speed of light is the easy part. Its the energy that counts, not the speed.
The plasma wakefield accelerators are indeed very promising, but are not yet able to replace traditional syncrotrons. For the sake of the field, its very important that a breakthrough occurs b/c even if the Chinese project magically gets funded, there is no possibility that the next bigger one will ever get built. Pumping the $ from the IHEP project into plasma or other alternatives seems like a better idea in the long run, than running a Higgs factory at a pretty middling energy ... when the CERN LHC will outperform until late 2030's anyway.
so if they make it a Mile long and use that lenght to accellerate the particles won't that make it even more energetic?
The Unites States of America are a country
A group is considered a single entity if all the members of the group are addressed together. You cannot have a group of "United States" be a country without including all 50 of them so they are addressed as a single group. The capitalization of United States of America also indicates you are referring to the collection of all 50 states together.
In contrast, if you said "The Red States are more conservative." then you are referring to the individual states in that group so they are treated as a plural subject.
Other examples: The Pit Crew is efficient, but the pit crew members are tired. The choir is rehearsing, but the choir singers are upset. http://public.wsu.edu/~brians/...
~~
And turn it into an expanding cloud of plasma a few picoseconds later.
'The' CERN collider? Which one of the 10 or so are they talking about ...?
The Famous LHC is a ring and is 27 km "long" but since it is a ring it is basically infinite ....
Michael Litos and his team were able to accelerate bunches of electrons to near the speed of light
"Near the speed of light" is not a particularly informative phrase when you're talking about particle colliders.
90%? 99%? 99.9999%?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
17 miles = 27.3 km
49 miles = 78.8 km
12 inches = 30.5 cm
You're welcome.
The poor 'scientists' at CERN have been found out. Now they will lose all the funding for their 'vital' research (that the general public don't care about, and don't want to pay for...)
LHC is designed to operate up to 14TeV; over 1000 times more.
The article seems to imply that this device is an afterburner or booster to particles already moving. The next question is whether they can be chained together in some fashion
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
The CERN particle collider is 17 miles long. The United States just announced a supercollider that is supposed to be roughly 49 miles long. Chinas new particle collider is just under 4 inches long. What the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory's new collider lacks in size, it makes up for by using plasma to accelerate particles more than 500 times faster than traditional methods. In a recent test published in Nature, Michael Litos and his team were able to accelerate bunches of electrons to near the speed of light within the tiny chamber."
We got a little frisky the other night, and when she reached down and asked "what's this", I told her it was a 12" super collider.
Just another day in Paradise
In my day we called them CRTs.
This is the missing piece of the puzzle I've been waiting for!
Now how much juice does one of these take?
I'm going to crowdfund this new pocket collider. Everyone should have one.
Beat that China
Let me know when they get the price down to $5 and I'll buy two.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
I was just wondering if we could just line 'em up in a chain, could we get the particles to accelerate to TeV / PeV levels? Super-symmetric Higgs round the corner? We can literally save the universe (at least in our minds) / cause a cool vacuum decay destroying everything :) Joy!
Collides particles we call "pool balls" because they are so large.
"There is no god but allah" - well, they got it half right.
Using plasma to accelerate particles 500 times faster gives rise to can this be used as a warp drive?
Hook the particle accelerators to the back end of a spaceship and see how fast it can go....
LOL
You just made me choke on my own spit as I cracked the hell up!
Thank you for that!