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New Particle Collider Is One Foot Long

Posted by samzenpus on from the it's-not-the-size-of-the-collider-it's-the-speed-of-the-particles dept.

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."

2 of 161 comments (clear)

  1. Re:so size DOESN'T matter? by codeButcher · · Score: 3, Insightful
    See, you don't even need 12 inches to accelerate the particles of a whoosh to near light speed.

    Unfortunately the mechanism (*) wasn't invented by Obama, but he sure as hell is using it to his advantage.

    (* = and by this I mean the mechanism allowing for whooshes, not the 12 inch particle accelerator.)

    --
    Free, as in your money being freed from the confines of your account.
  2. Re:It's been done...in 1959 by Lawrence_Bird · · Score: 3, Insightful

    First, this work is not really new, its just a derivative of laser wakefield techniques. Further, it is not apparent that this will scale properly. Just because you can get a nice gradient in the low GeV range doesn't mean you can continue the same at TeV energies.

    I would also point out that it is not simply enough to accelerate one small bunch of electrons/positrons (or even protons). Luminosity is also a very significant factor in particle physics.

    But it is good to see that research is continuing on high gradient alterntiaves to cyclotrons and synchrotrons.