Berkeley Lab Builds World Record Tabletop-Size Particle Accelerator

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Berkeley Lab Builds World Record Tabletop-Size Particle Accelerator

Posted by timothy on Tuesday December 9, 2014 @02:31AM from the paging-doctor-brown dept.

Zothecula writes Taking careful aim with a quadrillion watt laser, researchers at the US Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Lab claim to have managed to speed up subatomic particles to the highest energies ever recorded for a compact accelerator. By blasting plasma in their tabletop-size laser-plasma accelerator, the scientists assert that they have produced acceleration energy of around of 4.25 giga-electron volts. Acceleration of this magnitude over the short distances involved correlates to an energy rise 1,000 times greater than that of a traditional – and very much larger – particle accelerator.

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Good/BAd news for science. by jellomizer · 2014-12-09 02:41 · Score: 1

The good a smaller more affordable technology will allow greater numbers of people to do such research.
The bad news, it may be hard to get grants for large projects like the LHC where a full science based economy is built around a device.

--
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
1. Re:Good/BAd news for science. by drinkypoo · 2014-12-09 02:46 · Score: 1
  
  The bad news, it may be hard to get grants for large projects like the LHC where a full science based economy is built around a device.
  Perhaps we should be basing it around the design and production of smaller, less resource-intensive devices instead anyway, when such a thing is possible.
  
  --
  "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
2. Re:Good/BAd news for science. by TWX · 2014-12-09 02:47 · Score: 1
  
  On the other hand, as more and more capabilities are added on to this prototype, and subsequent production equipment, the new science that they'll be able to do will grow in scope and cost as well.
  
  What we're seeing here is a potential paradigm shift. Saying that there'll be no budget for expensive projects compared to this one is like saying now that the GM EV1 two-seater is out, there'll be no interest in V8-powered luxury cars. In reality, we're seeing paradigm shifts in that market where companies are figuring out how to give the features and options of old mated to the new technology.
  
  --
  Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
3. Re:Good/BAd news for science. by Crashmarik · 2014-12-09 02:51 · Score: 1
  
  A full science based economy ? Built around a device ?
  If that is the aim just build big cathedrals pop in a saint's reliquary and call it a day.
4. Re:Good/BAd news for science. by Anonymous Coward · 2014-12-09 03:00 · Score: 0
  
  The bad news, it may be hard to get grants for large projects like the LHC where a full science based economy is built around a device.
  In contrast, I see that as more good news. The LHC is obsolete. The "science based economy" of the area will try every lame excuse to keep people throwing money at it. Strong odds that if it is not abandoned, it ends up as some museum to the history of particle science.
  When something that fits on a table is obsolete, it goes into the attic. From there, it may be claimed as a learning tool, something to ease aspiring particle physicists into the complexities of the field.
  There's also the advantage of replication. "We got this to happen, come here and watch us use our stuff to do it again" is much less scientifically helpful than "we got this to happen, try these settings and see if it works for you."
5. Re:Good/BAd news for science. by jellomizer · 2014-12-09 03:10 · Score: 1
  
  Well we have issues with funding science.
  1. If the science isn't directly affecting a marketable product, it is hard to get funding from corporations.
  2. Universities need to make their money by teaching bratty undergrads, and most of the research has to teach them.
  3. Governments only like to give money if there is something in it that will get them elected.
  The LHC is big enough to positively affect a local economy, and the research is popular enough to get "I AM PRO-SCIENCE" creds.
  The sad thing is that to do a lot of science you need money. And those scientist who really want to do the science is spending most of their time trying to get and prove their grants, actually stuff that is better suited for those MBA's. Science based economies allow for scientists to get hired to do real science and not spend all their time trying to defend their budget.
  
  --
  If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
6. Re:Good/BAd news for science. by Anonymous Coward · 2014-12-09 03:13 · Score: 0
  
  The LHC is obsolete.
  Yeah... it is only more than three orders of magnitude more powerful than devices like this, and uses protons instead of electrons. Not to mention issues like luminosity and uniformity of energy that are important to a lot of projects.
  Wakefield accelerators will get better, but they still have a long ways to go to do high energy particle physics. There is a wide variety of possible uses now, but that doesn't mean they are capable of replacing all traditional accelerators. The big step will be when they are made to better scale, when possible to chain them together near indefinitely, in which case very large scale (and still large budget) accelerators will be built using them. In the shorter run, there will be possible uses of them to boost energy of the output of a traditional accelerator, as already being tested at SLAC, but the pure "tabletop" (considering the lasers involved, they spill over onto more than just a tabletop) ones are not going to make the LHC obsolete for a long while.
7. Re:Good/BAd news for science. by Anonymous Coward · 2014-12-09 03:52 · Score: 0
  
  2. Universities need to make their money by teaching bratty undergrads, and most of the research has to teach them.
  This is pretty far from the mark, for physics at least (I've seen engineering departments include undergrads more, but that is a different story). Many universities have a lot of their funding come from research grants, regardless of student participation, and tuition is not the largest source of money in some cases. For many physics projects, teaching undergrads is not a concern, and they are used as cheap labor under work-study financial aid programs. Some try to argue that just being around the labs gives them experience, but that only applies to a small subset of the undergrads, while most get a lot of experience with using hand tools at most (which is still better than filling forms, webpages or sitting at a cash register for their work-study program). But for the most part, no one pretends that they are getting a big educational experience. The bratty types are limited to getting that from the classes they barely pay attention to as is. A small number of hard working students with some initiative will take on summer or senior research projects, which can benefit a lot from research on campus, although can also be done by traveling to other locations and doing smaller projects not needing large experiments to piggyback on.
  Grad students on the other hand are the ones that benefit most by availability of research projects on campus. And why professors keep this in mind, as it is an extra selling point to research, it is not the central goal of most experiments. Grad students amount to cheap, somewhat skilled labor, but the experiment is still designed with results in mind. The funding agencies don't care much about student involvement, although the feign it from time to time when the community complains a bottleneck is being created if too many grad student relevant projects get axed. The universities don't care, because they still get the same slice of the grant through overhead, with any tuition funds coming out of the grant for a grad student being quite minor (some of which would be going back to the teaching profs anyway). They are more than happy to see large scale projects like LHC, because then they get the overhead from a collaborator's grant, but not have to worry about providing much other than an office. In other cases, they are more than happy to house a large project if they can get some contract to get extra money to administer the project. Students still end up being an afterthought.
8. Re:Good/BAd news for science. by omems · 2014-12-09 03:55 · Score: 1
  
  To be fair, the LHC is working with much higher energies. Wiki:
  "... two opposing particle beams of either protons at up to 4 teraelectronvolts (4 TeV or 0.64 microjoules), or lead nuclei at an energy of 574 TeV (92.0 J) per nucleus (2.76 TeV per nucleon),[4][5] with energies to be roughly doubled to around 7 TeV (14 TeV collision energy) —more than seven times any predecessor collider—by around 2015."
9. Re:Good/BAd news for science. by geekmux · 2014-12-09 03:58 · Score: 1
  
  The bad news, it may be hard to get grants for large projects like the LHC where a full science based economy is built around a device.
  In contrast, I see that as more good news. The LHC is obsolete. The "science based economy" of the area will try every lame excuse to keep people throwing money at it. Strong odds that if it is not abandoned, it ends up as some museum to the history of particle science.
  I highly doubt that will happen. Investing that kind of money into a solution does not pair up with our disposable society of computing.
  The computers sitting on Mars right now were obsolete long before we sent it into the void of space. That pretty much goes for all of our comms floating around in space right now, and yet we still rely on those obsolete devices every single day.
  Old does not always translate into worthless no matter how much of an Apple fanboi you are.
10. Re:Good/BAd news for science. by Anonymous Coward · 2014-12-09 05:24 · Score: 0
  
  The good a smaller more affordable technology will allow greater numbers of people to do such research.
  The bad news, it may be hard to get grants for large projects like the LHC where a full science based economy is built around a device.
  $9 billion and we know... That such a thing as a "Higgs Boson" is indeed theoretically possible to exist at 125 GeV and... that's about it. Yay for science! If we could have done that for $100M with a tabletop accelerator (or similar) and spent the rest on practical fusion energy research then nothing extra would have been wasted when the fusion research went nowhere, either.
  Spend the $9B on ending malaria and TB and you just might make the future a better place (reducing the struggle of developing nations reduces the poverty and extremism there, more than $90B or even $900B worth of bombs could and yet the west keeps on trying it their way).
  -1 troll? That's me.
11. Re:Good/BAd news for science. by Nethemas+the+Great · 2014-12-09 05:49 · Score: 1
  
  Want to fix global poverty issues? Transfer about 1% of defense spending to developing third-world economies. You'd have the problem licked in about a decade. Now shut up and get off my lawn.
  
  --
  Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once ... with negative results.
12. Re:Good/BAd news for science. by Crashmarik · 2014-12-09 05:50 · Score: 1
  
  We could just make it easier to get the research and experimentation tax credit.
  Just to put things on the table, I am pro science but I am anti lazy science. The LHC is by any standard lazy science, in that the thought progress for 60 years leading up to it, was build it BIGGER BIGGER BIGGER. It was pretty clear as far back as the SSC proposals there were other routes to go, ring type accelerators just have been a conceptually lazy approach. Also they tended to funny money and prestige into the mini industry that grew up around them, choking off potential other approaches.
13. Re:Good/BAd news for science. by Anonymous Coward · 2014-12-09 05:51 · Score: 0
  
  In contrast, I see that as more good news. The LHC is obsolete. The "science based economy" of the area will try every lame excuse to keep people throwing money at it.
  
  Another bloviating armchair physicist on slashdot , surprise surprise.
14. Re:Good/BAd news for science. by CaptSlaq · 2014-12-09 06:09 · Score: 1
  
  The Tetravon wasn't exactly peanuts and it's been shut down.
15. Re:Good/BAd news for science. by Anonymous Coward · 2014-12-09 06:37 · Score: 0
  
  It would be cooler if it produced sports cars per researcher, or even some nice SUV's.
16. Re:Good/BAd news for science. by geekmux · 2014-12-09 07:45 · Score: 1
  
  The Tetravon wasn't exactly peanuts and it's been shut down.
  It was in operation for almost 30 years.
  Operational longevity like that isn't peanuts either.
17. Re:Good/BAd news for science. by Anonymous Coward · 2014-12-09 07:57 · Score: 0
  
  It was pretty clear as far back as the SSC proposals there were other routes to go, ring type accelerators just have been a conceptually lazy approach. Also they tended to funny money and prestige into the mini industry that grew up around them, choking off potential other approaches.
  Exactly what alternatives have been around since SSC was just a proposal? In what way have other particle physics been blocking work like this, considering this technology is practically a wet dream to people in the field? And how is LHC just "Bigger" considering it used advances in technology to keep the size the same as the previous accelerator so as to use the same tunnel, and proposed upgrades to LHC do the same and concentrate on increasing luminosity?
  Wakefield and related accelerators have seen intense work, especially in the last decade. A lot of advances have been non-obvious and very detail oriented in terms of getting the concept to scale up, and there is still no idea how to continue to scale it up by several orders of magnitude. The technology is not anywhere near the point of competing with traditional high energy particle accelerators, and especially was not there years and decades ago when things like LHC and SSC were being developed. It will likely be at least another decade or two before they get to that point, and possibly longer, although is impacting proposals and design considerations for things like ILC. But there is no realistic expectation for it to have been an alternative for things that are up and running now, and just dumping a lot of money into it wouldn't have helped much years ago when there were still fundamental laser work being done to get to the point of making the accelerator concept achievable.
  It almost sounds like someone claiming we should have stopped making magnetic hard drives years ago, because their cheapness and large capacity have been holding SSD back. Regardless of the likelihood that SSDs will eventually replacing spinning disks in the future, they still have been and will continue for some time to be outclassed in certain use cases.
18. Re:Good/BAd news for science. by CaptSlaq · 2014-12-09 09:35 · Score: 1
  
  The Tetravon wasn't exactly peanuts and it's been shut down.
  It was in operation for almost 30 years.
  Operational longevity like that isn't peanuts either.
  And upgraded several times through that 30 years, including some work less than 2 years before it was shut down.
  I'm not saying that "The LHC should be shut down", but claiming that "The LHC won't get shut down because it was expensive" is, in my opinion, a misnomer.
  I'll point back to your original statement: "Old does not always translate into worthless", but apparently my understanding of your statement is "at some point, it does".
19. Re:Good/BAd news for science. by sjames · 2014-12-09 10:08 · Score: 1
  
  There are many good applications for a device generating energies in the 4Gev range, but for things like finding Higgs, it's not even close. Some things just have to have full power. Many other things surrounding it are there because they can benefit from the essentially free excess of particles.
20. Re:Good/BAd news for science. by Crashmarik · 2014-12-09 11:22 · Score: 1
  
  It almost sounds like someone claiming we should have stopped making magnetic hard drives years ago, because their cheapness and large capacity have been holding SSD back. Regardless of the likelihood that SSDs will eventually replacing spinning disks in the future, they still have been and will continue for some time to be outclassed in certain use cases.
  LOL scratch a big scientist and find someone who believes in a command economy. The difference between the LHC and Hard drives is that people buy hard drives of their own free will. The money for the LHC is extracted at the threat of imprisonment.
  And just an FYI plasma accelerators go back to the 80s, when it was already clear the SSC had reached ridiculousness.
21. Re:Good/BAd news for science. by Anonymous Coward · 2014-12-09 13:44 · Score: 0
  
  So you actually have no counter point to any of the issues pointed out with your original statement? And yeah, plasma accelerators go back to the 80s, by which you mean 1988, about the time SSC's construction was starting and well past its planning stage. This came after nearly two decades of peak laser intensity being constant, as there was some time between the development of mode-locking lasers and the development of broadband Ti:sapphire lasers a couple years before that led to chirped pulse amplification finally causing growth in laser intensity. And although laser intensity has grown in by many orders of magnitude, peak energies produced by plasma based accelerators lags behind the growth in electric field as there are still a lot of technical hurtles to scaling the things.
  If you want to argue that large particle accelerators are a boondoggle or not even efficient spending for of money for science in the big picture compared to other more practical results, go right ahead, there are a lot knowledgeable people out there making such arguments already. But if you are going to argue instead that they were a waste because the technology is obsolete, that is just naive and disconnected from the real world. The state of the technology was not even competitive with table top accelerators build-able by a high school students when it was developed in the 80s. And even with the extremely rapid growth in the technology, it won't be competitive with large scale accelerators for several decades, assuming it can surpass some several hurtles expected in the development of higher power lasers. Even then, the expectation is the development of scalability, which means you will still end up with projects the same size as LHC, just much more powerful.
  You think you've stepped on the toes of some particle physicist that is upset at a dying empire, when instead you're dealing with someone who works in the plasma-laser interaction research trying to point out how ignorant your statement was and remind people of the reality of the work in the field.
22. Re:Good/BAd news for science. by Crashmarik · 2014-12-09 14:55 · Score: 1
  
  You think you've stepped on the toes of some particle physicist that is upset at a dying empire,
  
  No I am pretty sure I have stepped on the toes of someone who is happy with the status quo of how government funds academic science, and probably aspires to have the spot occupied by a dieing generation.
  
  So you actually have no counter point to any of the issues pointed out with your original statement?
  What issues have you raised ? You have blathered on about plasma accelerators getting funding 20 years late.
23. Re:Good/BAd news for science. by Anonymous Coward · 2014-12-09 19:14 · Score: 0
  
  "What issues have you raised ? You have blathered on about plasma accelerators getting funding 20 years late."
  
  Wah... you got told by a researcher in the field that the technology was not an option for what you think should have been done, i.e. you've been told your hindsight is far short of 20/20.
  
  If you wanted to complain about big science projects being funded by the government, maybe you should have actually looked into what you propose actually costs too, considering the laser for the experiment in the story here costs more than $30 million, and than hundreds of millions get spent on developing the lasers used for these plasma accelerator projects. The US budgets for high intensity laser development is actually higher than accelerator physics development and has been for decades in the US.
  
  But hey, you're sure throwing more money at it would have solver problems it faces decades ago, as opposed to waiting for industry to develop many of the key technologies that are crucial allowing the development advancing as far as it has so far. Considering these things as is have industrial applications and now have commercial R&D interest with a lot of components being off the shelf, the funding isn't too late, but was too much too early.
24. Re:Good/BAd news for science. by Anonymous Coward · 2014-12-09 19:18 · Score: 0
  
  "That such a thing as a "Higgs Boson" is indeed theoretically possible to exist at 125 GeV and... that's about it. "
  If you think that is all the LHC has been used for and the only important result to come out of it so far, then you're in no way qualified to give any opinion on its value and cost, even if it is actually a boondoggle.
25. Re:Good/BAd news for science. by Crashmarik · 2014-12-09 20:32 · Score: 1
  
  Unh hunh. Where do I start
  LHC cost vs Accelerator spending in the U.S. nice change up there. Why don't you argue botswana's particle physics budget as the opposition ?
  And while you are at it why don't you mention just how much of the U.S. laser budget is military based, rendering the pure science aspects a freebie ?
  
  Considering these things as is have industrial applications and now have commercial R&D interest with a lot of components being off the shelf, the funding isn't too late, but was too much too early.
  Name a few, there's virtually none. The last time I saw someone make this claim it was a colleague working at RHIC trying to tie his work to P.E.T. scans, and he knew it was B.S. and I knew it was B.S.
26. Re:Good/BAd news for science. by Anonymous Coward · 2014-12-10 02:18 · Score: 0
  
  You have blathered on about plasma accelerators getting funding 20 years late.
  They've been funded as much as possible from the start, any earlier, and there was no other technology available for them to actually work. Just as funding for them in the 50s before the laser was invented wouldn't have made sense, because there would have been no know light source to power them or any expectation to have one developed, funding them before the late 80s there would still not have been any appropriate know light source as the right kind of laser had not been developed yet nor was expected to be. It was not a matter of someone saying "We know what to do, we only need the money to get start" it was key technologies being discovered after a decade or two of stagnation despite active research. Those "Ah ha" moments can't be planned for, and just throwing large piles of money at a project won't guarantee them.
  
  appy with the status quo of how government funds academic science, and probably aspires to have the spot occupied by a dieing generation.
  And yet you've advocated that this could be stopped by endorsing another technology that would require the exact same big science environment to function in?
27. Re:Good/BAd news for science. by Anonymous Coward · 2014-12-10 02:55 · Score: 0
  
  LHC cost vs Accelerator spending in the U.S. nice change up there.
  
  The other AC is correct though, the spending on ultrafast laser development is higher in the US than particle accelerator physics in the US, and is also higher in Europe too, although the numbers get much harder to collect across the world for comparison to a single international project. You can't just look at the total LHC cost to one of these lasers either, as that is a blatantly misleading. A large part of LHC cost, especially what the US has spent, is for the detectors, which would still be needed for a plasma accelerator. Another extremely large cost is the infrastructure and staffing to analyze particle data. The number of engineers and scientists actually working on developing the accelerator part is quite small, and the only part that would change by switching to a plasma based accelerator (not to mention no argument has been made that an accelerator of that scale would be any easier to make yet).
  
  Name a few, there's virtually none.
  Ion implantation, one of the largest industrial uses, employs more than 10k some accelerators around the world and is one of the reason you can just buy off the shelf accelerators these days. These are used for modifying materials from everything in the production of certain kinds of silicon to special steel alloys. Considering these are in the 1-100 MeV range, they would be prime candidates for replacement by plasma accelerators, although it is difficult for the plasma accelerators to compete on cost at that range too considering the price of the laser equipment needed. Synchrotron light sources are useful for generating very strong, clean spectra across a broad range, used for quite a few things from a calibration source to x-ray crystallography. There are commercially available synchrotron light sources, including now plasma accelerator based ones. Then there is radiotherapy, with some methods like particle therapy, requiring an accelerator, while others preferring an accelerator over using a radioactive source if it could be made cost competitive. Radioisotope generation requires accelerators. So do some neutron sources used for neutron activation analysis, especially those used by the oil industry who don't want to deal with californium sources and have been convering to accelerator based sources that actually fit within boreholes for analysis of rock in situ while drilling. And this list is in no way comprehensive.
  Either you're being disingenuous, or you're probably just misremembering exactly what the person from RHIC was trying to say. For this whole thread, you seem to have little to no grasp of the technologies and research involved, and yet think you know exactly which one would be a golden ticket to further your political view. The result is instead of a potential reasonable political position or a potential reasonable opinion on science policy, you end up with just being borderline delusional about what could actually work, and continue to showcase a proud ignorance in the topics as if it furthers your point.
28. Re:Good/BAd news for science. by Crashmarik · 2014-12-10 03:12 · Score: 1
  
  Really I don't know how it would be possible to more completely miss a point. It's not about particular tech it's about the process of funding. You fund fund Brodibingian versions of things you have already done, it means you aren't funding other approaches. You want another good example ? Take the human genome project, Ventner's shotgun technique blew away the existing techniques.
29. Re:Good/BAd news for science. by Crashmarik · 2014-12-10 03:23 · Score: 1
  
  Well I would be completely taken aback, If I knew nothing about the field.
  Lets go one by one
  Ion implantation, This goes back to the 1950s you want to tell me how it's a spin off from the LHC ?
  Synchrotron Light Sources : At least back to the 70s and btw you forgot to mention it's cousin the Free Electron laser
  Radiotherapy: Goes back to the early 1900s
  Radio Isotope generation for medicine: Goes back to the original cyclotrons, want to tell me how this is a spinoff from giant accelerators ?
  Your list may in no way be comprehensive except for being comprehensively wrong.
30. Re:Good/BAd news for science. by Crashmarik · 2014-12-10 03:38 · Score: 1
  
  Oh and I forgot to mention it. But most radionuclides for medicine are made in reactors not with accelerators. Though I would be willing to bet there are people trying to adapt a Farnsworth Fusor to the production.
  But please keep on posting factual inaccuracies, it leaves little doubt why you are posting anonymously.
31. Re:Good/BAd news for science. by Anonymous Coward · 2014-12-10 05:33 · Score: 0
  
  "The last time I saw someone make this claim it was a colleague working at RHIC trying to tie his work to P.E.T. scans, and he knew it was B.S. and I knew it was B.S."
  So not only are you stupid cry baby, you're stupid cry baby trying to blame it on having stupid friends...
32. Re:Good/BAd news for science. by Anonymous Coward · 2014-12-10 05:39 · Score: 0
  
  Hey genius, no one said those were spin offs of LHC. Those are all applications of accelerator technology, in use, that could be replaced and are being replaced by plasma based accelerators. As said before, the funding for plasma based accelerators isn't too little, it is too much because industry would have and is developing them on their own. Yet you're advocating the government should have spent more money on it to do things they can't do, but completely missing how much work it took to make them to do what they can do.
  It is people like you that make others think small government types are inept about science, unless you are purposely trying to set up strawmen to be knocked down.
33. Re:Good/BAd news for science. by Crashmarik · 2014-12-10 07:38 · Score: 1
  
  "The last time I saw someone make this claim it was a colleague working at RHIC trying to tie his work to P.E.T. scans, and he knew it was B.S. and I knew it was B.S."
  So not only are you stupid cry baby, you're stupid cry baby trying to blame it on having stupid friends...
  Well good to see where you were coming from all along.
34. Re:Good/BAd news for science. by Crashmarik · 2014-12-10 07:56 · Score: 1
  
  Thanks for letting me know what I was advocating and then showing where what you said I said was wrong.
  I am sure there's a word for that kind of thing.
  Anyway if you can let me know how citing applications of technologies developed long before the LHC was a dream of anyone's eye is relevant to its funding ?
  Otherwise I expect you will come back with something about how basic physics lets us design buildings so that's why we should fund things like the LHC.
Yawn by oodaloop · 2014-12-09 02:41 · Score: 1

Didn't Iron Man use one of these to make starktonium a few years ago?

--
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
1. Re:Yawn by halivar · 2014-12-09 02:51 · Score: 1
  
  No, that was a "prismatic accelerator." It... accelerated.... prisms?
2. Re:Yawn by weenvictoria · 2014-12-09 21:50 · Score: 1
  
  I think you are a physicist Friv
Next step: by TheDarkMaster · 2014-12-09 02:42 · Score: 4, Insightful

Ghostbusters proton weapon

--
Religion: The greatest weapon of mass destruction of all time
1. Re:Next step: by TWX · 2014-12-09 02:48 · Score: 2
  
  The device is small, but the power source is the size of a building.
  
  --
  Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
2. Re:Next step: by gstoddart · 2014-12-09 02:58 · Score: 1
  
  The device is small, but the power source is the size of a building.
  That's what she said ... ;-)
  
  --
  Lost at C:>. Found at C.
3. Re:Next step: by Anonymous Coward · 2014-12-09 03:40 · Score: 1
  
  Don't cross the beams! Or think about marshmallows.
4. Re:Next step: by TheDarkMaster · 2014-12-09 03:40 · Score: 1
  
  Punny details... Working on this, do not worry :-D
  
  --
  Religion: The greatest weapon of mass destruction of all time
5. Re:Next step: by geekmux · 2014-12-09 04:41 · Score: 1
  
  Ghostbusters proton weapon
  Well, I guess so.
  At least we already know what happens when you cross the streams.
Song by Anonymous Coward · 2014-12-09 02:42 · Score: 0

Bally or a no man
peed on face, you've got
mud on your face
big disgrace
wavin' your Bruce Banner (tm) all over the place! Chris Cuevas
We Will..We Will
Rock you! Chuck!
Boom-Boom Chuck!
OH MY GAWD!
perhaps the most critical part of this development by nimbius · 2014-12-09 02:46 · Score: 2

Here at the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab this technology enables us to conduct a wide range of advanced research in a timely fashion. this tabletop-size device will also replace the crappier microwave in the breakroom with the broken turntable. So get with keith or lisa if you need help figuring out how to heat up a burrito and as always...please...no fish.

--
Good people go to bed earlier.
Re: Beowulf cluster... by taiwanjohn · 2014-12-09 02:48 · Score: 1

Seriously though, how far can this scale up? What if just plug one of these into the LHC?

--
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
Duh! by JimSadler · 2014-12-09 02:50 · Score: 1

Is it me or is a quadrillion watt laser just something that I can not really grasp? That sounds like a whole bunch of energy applied over a very short period of time. It is sort of like trying to imagine how many grains of sand exist in the world. After the first billion or so the numbers don't mean much to me.
1. Re:Duh! by fnj · 2014-12-09 03:07 · Score: 1
  
  It would be much more instructive to learn the laser's energy delivery in Joules than its power in PW for some unspecified but infinitesimal duration.
2. Re:Duh! by gstoddart · 2014-12-09 03:12 · Score: 1
  
  Is it me or is a quadrillion watt laser just something that I can not really grasp?
  No, it's not just you.
  Most human brains really can't figure out WTF this means. Even the people who work in this stuff occasionally remember what they're saying and think "damn".
  My first thought was "is quadrillion a real number?", followed by thinking ... million, billion, trillion, quadrillion.
  Million = 1,000,000
  Billion = 1,000,000,000
  Trillion = 1,000,000,000,000
  Quadrillion = 1,000,000,000,000,000
  And, yes, at that point it's a mere abstraction for most of us. You're definitely not the only one.
  
  --
  Lost at C:>. Found at C.
3. Re:Duh! by ColdWetDog · 2014-12-09 03:59 · Score: 1
  
  quadrillion = 1E15.
  That makes it easier.
  
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  Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
4. Re:Duh! by Immerman · 2014-12-09 04:03 · Score: 1
  
  Not really, both numbers are incredibly important: and they provided both. It only takes an instant to do it's job, and in that instant the power levels are highly important if you want to understand the physics. And they do tell you the energy delivered on a per-electron basis - the most important number, joules are just far to large to be relevant to particle physics: 4.25GeV = 6.8092504 × 10^-10 joules
  Even the LHC doesn't get into the joule range: 7TeV = 1.1215236 × 10^-6 joules
  
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5. Re:Duh! by stjobe · 2014-12-09 04:06 · Score: 1
  
  42.2 Joules, actually.
  But since that energy was delivered in 40 femtoseconds, they multiplied the two values and said it is a petawatt laser.
  Funny what a wikipedia search might teach you :)
  
  --
  "Total destruction the only solution" - Bob Marley
6. Re:Duh! by Immerman · 2014-12-09 04:16 · Score: 1
  
  You know, as acclimated as I am to American-style large numbers, I can't help thinking the British may be on to something with their definition of billion = bi-million = 1,000,000 x 1,000,000, or what we would call a trillion.
  By that logic I would extrapolate that in Britain the terms would mean
  Billion = 1,000,000^2 = 1,000,000,000,000
  Trillion = 1,000,000^3 = 1,000,000,000,000,000,000
  Quadrillion = 1,000,000^4 = 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
  etc.
  Doesn't line up with SI units as nicely, but is much better suited to talking about really large numbers. I mean the largest SI prefix (Yotta) is only 10^24 = 1,000^8 = 1,000,000^4. So quint-, sex-, sept-, oct-, non- illions etc. would be discussing orders of magnitude we have no convenient words for at present.
  As for your original question, I think I remember hearing that even quadrillion isn't a formally recognized word, but I bet you any mathematician, etc. would know what you were talking about if even you mentioned septillions - it's a completely logical extrapolation of accepted naming practices, and I say that makes it a valid word.
  
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  --- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
7. Re:Duh! by Anonymous Coward · 2014-12-09 04:24 · Score: 0
  
  divided, not multiplied:
  [W]=[J]/[s]
8. Re:Duh! by gstoddart · 2014-12-09 04:52 · Score: 1
  
  You know, it's easier to say, and it's shorter to write.
  But when I'm trying to wrap my head around what it's actually saying ... I prefer to see the huge list of zeroes.
  And then my brain sort of wobbles around and does the Keanu Reeves "woah".
  Some of these numbers are just so intractable to the human brain you need a visual reference.
  
  --
  Lost at C:>. Found at C.
9. Re:Duh! by ceoyoyo · 2014-12-09 07:25 · Score: 1
  
  The important number they seem to have left out is the luminosity.
10. Re:Duh! by Neil+Boekend · 2014-12-10 02:13 · Score: 1
  
  It lines up perfectly:
  Million = 1,000,000 = Mega
  Milliard = 1,000,000,000 = Giga
  Billion = 1,000,000,000,000 = Tera
  Billiard = 1,000,000,000,000,000 = Peta
  Trillion = 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 = Exa
  Trilliard = 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 = Zetta
  Quadrillion = 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 = Yotta
  Quadrilliard = 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
  Etc
  
  --
  Well, I might have a way, but it only works on a semi spherical planet in a vacuum.
electrons by Lawrence_Bird · 2014-12-09 02:51 · Score: 3, Interesting

there has been much research in reducing the size of accelerators since ... forever. These guys are probably only reallly useful for e+/- collisions so it is highly stupid to compare it the LHC or even Tevatron - the appropriate comparison is something like SLC at SLAC. Where these will really find most use (if they can make the laser side practical) is in medicine.
What about efficiency? by Rei · 2014-12-09 02:56 · Score: 1

Anyone know what the efficiencies are on these sorts of "tabletop" laser particle accelerators versus say a linac? I'm curious as to whether it'd make an effective "tabletop" spallation neutron source - protons in the range of a couple hundred MEv to a few GEv are ideal for that purpose. (yes, I know this one is an electron accelerator, but ultrashort laser pulses can also accelerate protons, although I don't know if you can hit the same sorts of energies).

--
"We consider that six courts and an asylum claim are a rather odd way of returning to Sweden within a month."
1. Re:What about efficiency? by the+gnat · 2014-12-09 04:46 · Score: 1
  
  Anyone know what the efficiencies are on these sorts of "tabletop" laser particle accelerators versus say a linac? I'm curious as to whether it'd make an effective "tabletop" spallation neutron source
  I don't know about efficiency, but the problem with the tabletop synchrotrons (which accelerate electrons, but X-rays are the primary product) is that their X-ray flux is much lower than the football-field-sized rings, which means they're not as useful for molecular imaging applications. My guess would be that the same problem would apply to a tabletop neutron source.
2. Re:What about efficiency? by joe_frisch · 2014-12-09 09:49 · Score: 1
  
  Superconducting linacs can be quite efficient - 10s of %. Electric costs are not a major driver for most accelerators so typically they are not that good in order to save construction costs. You could probably design >50% wall plug -> beam efficiency accelerator if you wanted to.
  Laser accelerators are not that good at converting laser energy to beam energy. I don't know the numbers, but above ~10% would surprise me. Then the high drive lasers are very inefficient (these are not diode laesrs!). Both those can be improved, but I would be surprised if the final efficiency were as high as for a conventional superconducting linac.
  For low power beam applications that may not be a significant disadvantage and the short length is of course a big advantage. (though the drive laser is big).
Tabletop? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-12-09 03:06 · Score: 0

Nothing is real until you can fit it in a watch!
300,000 gigawatts? by damien_kane · 2014-12-09 03:11 · Score: 1

Though, in this initial experiment, it was limited to pulses of a "mere" 0.3 PW or 300,000 gigawatts.
Does this mean they can travel through time approximately 250,000 times faster than Doc Brown could? Or is the conversion from gigawatts to jiggawatts nonlinear?
1. Re:300,000 gigawatts? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-12-09 03:16 · Score: 0
  
  What the hell is a jiggawatt?
2. Re:300,000 gigawatts? by halivar · 2014-12-09 03:25 · Score: 1
  
  Nerd Card Status: REVOKED.
3. Re:300,000 gigawatts? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-12-09 03:46 · Score: 0
  
  No sir, that is a direct quote from Marty in the first movie. You must now relinquish your Nerd Card.
4. Re:300,000 gigawatts? by Immerman · 2014-12-09 04:21 · Score: 1
  
  Said every science geek on the planet the first time they watch Back to the Future.
  I believe it's the bastard offspring of a gigawatt and a movie studio that had no use for even a cut-rate science advisor for its marginally science fiction movie.
  
  --
  --- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
5. Re:300,000 gigawatts? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-12-09 05:11 · Score: 0
  
  Ironically:
  http://wheels.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/04/08/you-say-gigawatt-i-say-jigowatt/?_r=0
  But saying "giga" with a soft "g" just sounds stupid in this day and age, regardless of where the prefix originated from.
6. Re:300,000 gigawatts? by ceoyoyo · 2014-12-09 07:36 · Score: 1
  
  Pronouncing gigawatt like jiggawatt is perfectly valid. I've never looked at a Back to the Future script so I don't know if they spelled it correctly or not.
7. Re:300,000 gigawatts? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-12-09 08:17 · Score: 0
  
  Closed captioning has it as "gigawatt"
  A shame, really. all those deaf people will never get that slight nuance... ...and yes, Marty asked Doc "what the hell is a jigawatt?"
8. Re:300,000 gigawatts? by ceoyoyo · 2014-12-09 08:52 · Score: 1
  
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G...
  The jigga pronunciation was apparently popular in the US in the 80s (when Back to the Future was made), and was made a standard by NIST. It's since swung overwhelmingly towards the hard g.
  It looks like you're right though, the pronunciation in the movie, despite being correct, WAS the result of scriptwriters who had no idea what it was:
  http://wheels.blogs.nytimes.co...
Tabletop converter, not accelerator by Anonymous Coward · 2014-12-09 03:14 · Score: 2, Informative

The thing on the table top takes a laser pulse and uses the energy to accelerate particles to high speed.
The laser is BELLA it takes a building
http://www.lbl.gov/community/bella/
Still, it's much better that a multi km ring.
Both size and energy.
1. Re:Tabletop converter, not accelerator by Anonymous Coward · 2014-12-09 08:22 · Score: 0
  
  The unit as a whole is actually a plasma wakefield accelerator.
The LEP only went to 104,5 GeV by grimJester · 2014-12-09 03:15 · Score: 1

Electron-positron collisions are much cleaner than proton-proton ones. The LEP did exclude the Higgs up to 115 GeV while it actually was around 125, so scaling this up by a factor of 40 or so would make a small Higgs factory. Dunno about luminosity but maybe that's not a problem.
1. Re:The LEP only went to 104,5 GeV by ceoyoyo · 2014-12-09 07:33 · Score: 2
  
  Luminosity is a problem. The amount of data you get about a particular energy (like 125 GeV) is a function of both the collision energy and the rate of those collisions.
2. Re:The LEP only went to 104,5 GeV by Mr.CRC · 2014-12-10 16:00 · Score: 1
  
  Yes, there is more to an accelerator than energy. There's luminosity, beam current, and oodles of other parameters about bunching, etc. all of which affect the data rate and signal to noise ratio when conducting frontier science experiments such as what the LHC does. So the LHC and giant accelerators won't be going away any time soon.
  But small accelerator tech. that can put modest energies at modest luminosities into the hands of researchers with $50-250k budgets and small lab spaces would be a great improvement over having to get in line for precious beam line opportunities at the smaller "user facility" accelerator labs.
  Get it down to $10-50k and serious amateur scientists/hobbyists will start having accelerators!
Here's your affordable Swedish crap. by Anonymous Coward · 2014-12-09 03:21 · Score: 0

Soon I will be able to order one from Pi-Kia.
I can't wait for the ... by CaptainDork · 2014-12-09 03:26 · Score: 1

... advertiser-supported app for this.

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It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
free electric by Anonymous Coward · 2014-12-09 03:26 · Score: 0

free electric/utility for everyone
Dear Santa, I want 4.2GeV Particle Accelerator by Anonymous Coward · 2014-12-09 03:41 · Score: 0

I want one!
Tabletop? by rossdee · 2014-12-09 03:44 · Score: 1

Tables come in all sorts of sizes, from card tables through ones used for a state banquet.
Re:Only good news for science. by Framboise · 2014-12-09 03:55 · Score: 1

Indeed low cost means more affordable devices for more labs, and new technology means possible expansion to bigger (then more exensive) such devices, allowing to explore new frontiers in physics.
Re: Beowulf cluster... by Immerman · 2014-12-09 03:57 · Score: 2

Neglecting the fact that this accelerates electrons, while the LHC works with protons...
And assuming the energy adds linearly...
The resultant particle beam would be all of 0.0607% more powerful.
There's a reason the LHC is huge, it's accelerating protons to about 7TeV, or 0.999999991c, just 3m/s slower than light speed. That's not to say that these little linear accelerators don't have their use, there's no doubt lots of low-energy physics experiments that can be performed with electrons at a paltry 4.25GeV, which can now be done more cheaply and compactly while freeing up the "real" particle accelerators to do more work at the high energy levels that only they are capable of. Sort of like a Farnsworth fusor is a cheap and easy fusion reactor anyone can build if they need an energetic neutron source - but you're unlikely to even look at it if your goal is to do interesting fusion-related research.

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--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Home delivery by Anonymous Coward · 2014-12-09 05:47 · Score: 0

When can I have one delivered from my local pi-kea?
I want to hear more about by mark_reh · 2014-12-09 06:42 · Score: 1

the "smallest miscalculation could lead to disaster". What sort of disaster are we talking about here? Will it tear a hole in the space time continuum and result in an ever expanding vacuum bubble that will engulf the known universe?
1. Re:I want to hear more about by Neil+Boekend · 2014-12-10 02:23 · Score: 1
  
  Well, just about anything could do that. Clapping my hands has an infinitesimally small chance of doing that.
  This has a slightly larger chance.
  
  --
  Well, I might have a way, but it only works on a semi spherical planet in a vacuum.
{Admiral Ackbar voice} by neo-mkrey · 2014-12-09 08:44 · Score: 1

"There's no way we can repel firepower of that magnitude!"