particle accelerator
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Faster-Than-Light ‘Quasiparticles’ Touted as Futuristic Light Source
Nothing can travel faster than light, or 299,792,458 meters per second. But a certain group of particles acts as if it can, a team of physicists recently concluded, potentially paving the way for a powerful light source that could reveal new kinds of science. When electrons are excited and pushed around, they produce light of…
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These Souped-Up X-rays Are Nearly Ready to Zap Stuff
Scientists are preparing to unleash an extraordinarily powerful X-ray beam that will help reveal how the universe works at the tiniest scales. The beam is made possible thanks to an upgrade to the 3 km-long particle accelerator in Menlo Park, California, which will energize electrons to 99.9999999% the speed of light — around 670 million…
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A Radically New Particle Accelerator Could Have 500 Times The Power
If you know anything about the Large Hadron Collider, you know that it is huge. Massive. 17 miles of tunnels under Switzerland. Traditional accelerators need all that space to get particles to smash into each other at close to the speed of light. But scientists at Stanford have come one step closer to a new…