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CERN's Pioneering Mini-Accelerator Passes First Test (nature.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Nature: An experiment at CERN has demonstrated a new way of accelerating electrons to high energies -- one that could dramatically shrink the size of future particle accelerators and lower their costs. The technique is the latest entrant in a hot race to develop a technology called plasma wakefield acceleration. The method uses waves in plasma, a soup of ionized atoms, to push electrons to ever-higher energies over distances much shorter than those required in today's particle accelerators. Several laboratories have demonstrated plasma wakefield acceleration using two different approaches; most teams use laser beams to create the plasma waves needed. The latest work is the first to show that protons can also induce the waves and achieve electron acceleration -- a technique that may have advantages over the others because protons can carry high energies over long distances.
In this case, researchers diverted protons that would usually be fed into the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, Europe's particle-physics lab near Geneva, Switzerland, and instead inserted them into the wakefield accelerator, called the Advanced Wakefield Experiment (AWAKE). The machine worked as expected and created a consistent beam of accelerated electrons. "That, for us, was a major achievement," says Matthew Wing, a physicist at University College London, who is deputy spokesperson for AWAKE. "It essentially says that the method works, and it's never been done before." The work is described in Nature on 29 August.
In this case, researchers diverted protons that would usually be fed into the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, Europe's particle-physics lab near Geneva, Switzerland, and instead inserted them into the wakefield accelerator, called the Advanced Wakefield Experiment (AWAKE). The machine worked as expected and created a consistent beam of accelerated electrons. "That, for us, was a major achievement," says Matthew Wing, a physicist at University College London, who is deputy spokesperson for AWAKE. "It essentially says that the method works, and it's never been done before." The work is described in Nature on 29 August.
eh? most science and tech budgets fell under Obama though he promised doubling them. Hilary would do differently?
I suspect Obama had very little control over budgets while he was in office. Congress has the power of the purse. He had some influence over congress for the first two years. The other 6 was pretty much congress doing the opposite of whatever came out of his mouth.
Can't we just tell the guy protons that their girl is bonding with another nucleus, and let nature sort it out?
Or. As the kids are saying, Awoke.
I won't even pretend to be intelligent enough to discern the ramifications of this development, yet it seems plausible this is a big advancement.
QWouldn't it be great if our ability to advance technology outpaced our tribalism-based predisposition towards self-destruction?
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
That was a rather complicated read... Increased particle acceleration firing electrons into a mix of more electrons and positive ions instead being in a vacuum.
To what end, I have no idea. But interesting.
Regarding the movie, from one paragraph in TFA:
1. Super Proton Synchrotron
2. rubidium plasma
3. A specially built smaller accelerator produces electrons that are inserted in the protonsâ(TM) wake.
4. Energies in even the 50-GeV range could be useful for experiments in which electrons are shot at a fixed target.
#3 and 4 have me mystified, great lines for a mad scientist.
Plot: Just have reality rip apart rather than some earthquake, tsunami, meteor, or Sharknado. Reality rips like broken glass, spreading from the experiment center. There is a twist ending.
Someone write the script, let's get this movie made!
BlameBillCosby.com
Good news. Just in time to get one cancelled in Texas.
Have gnu, will travel.
If you've ever wanted a particle accelerator on your desk, and a CRT monitor just doesn't do it for you, I found just the thing.
Plasma. And the fact that people have been working on them for decades with nothing to show for it.
This was a big story in Canada circa 1989 because they built a surfatron and reached some new limit. Now it's 30 years later and we're still not using them. Maybe in another 30 years?