Latest Particle accelerator Stories
University of Southampton An international team of physicists has proposed a revolutionary laser system, inspired by the telecommunications technology, to produce the next generation of particle accelerators, such as the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). The International Coherent Amplification Network (ICAN) sets out a new laser system composed of massive arrays of thousands of fiber lasers, for both fundamental research at laboratories such as CERN and more applied tasks such as proton...
Charged particle accelerators have become crucially important to modern day life, be it in health care for cancer treatment or for answering important fundamental scientific questions like the existence of the HIGGS boson, the so called 'God particle'. In a simple picture, charged particles like electrons and protons are accelerated between two end plates across which an electrical voltage is applied. High energies need high voltages (millions and billions of volts) and long acceleration...
April Flowers for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online A new study, released this week in the journal Science, shows that even in the world of sub-atomic particles, size matters. An international group of scientists led by Aldo Antognini, a physicist at the Max Planck Institute for Quantum Optics, say the proton, a basic building block of all matter, appears to be smaller than previously thought. This finding, which confirms a similar result the team showed in 2010, may open new...
Alan McStravick for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Just outside of Geneva, Switzerland is one of the world’s foremost ongoing experiments to explore not only the smallest components of our universe, but, in so doing, to understand the vastness of space, our universe as a whole, and just how it came into being. The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN is an approximately 17-mile-long ring buried some 330 feet underground which spans the border between Switzerland and France. The...
Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online The European Space Agency (ESA) is looking into how Moon and Martian soil could be used to help shield astronauts in space. ESA is teaming up with Germany's GSI particle accelerator for a two-year project in assessing promising materials for shielding future astronauts en route to the Moon, an asteroid or Mars. “We are working with the only facility in Europe capable of simulating the high-energy heavy atomic nuclei found in...
Brett Smith for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Now that the ‘God Particle’ has been discovered, is it time to pack up CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and move on to other projects? Not so fast, say physicists who are looking to upgrade the 4-year-old particle accelerator. CERN’s governing body has just approved plans that would shut down the LHC for two years while it gets a $1.9 billion upgrade. The improvements would theoretically increase the power of the LHC’s...
LOS ALAMOS, N.M., April 11, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- A new medical isotope project at Los Alamos National Laboratory shows promise for rapidly producing major quantities of a new cancer-treatment agent, actinium 225 (Ac-225). (Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20120411/DC86216) Using proton beams, Los Alamos and its partner Brookhaven National Laboratory could match current annual worldwide production of the isotope in just a few days, solving critical shortages of...
With a sustained data rate of 186 gigabits per second, high-energy physicists demonstrate the efficient use of long-range networks to support cutting-edge science Researchers have set a new world record for data transfer, helping to usher in the next generation of high-speed network technology. At the SuperComputing 2011 (SC11) conference in Seattle during mid-November, the international team transferred data in opposite directions at a combined rate of 186 gigabits per second (Gbps) in a...
In October's issue of Physics World, Phil Marshall, an astrophysicist at the University of Oxford, calls on physicists to pull their weight when it comes to climate change, drawing on his own research showing that astronomers average 23,000 air miles per year flying to observatories, conferences and meetings, and use 130 KWh more energy per day than the average US citizen. Marshall says that physicists must not only act as "trusted voices" in climate-change debates, but also do all they...
The Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory's Tevatron particle accelerator is set to retire on Friday, ending its 25 year career in an Illinois prairie. The Tevatron has been outranked by the more powerful atom smasher Large Hadron Collider, built by the European Center for Nuclear Research (CERN). U.S. physicists will now have to work with CERN on high-energy projects instead of pursuing the research on their own turf. The American particle accelerator failed to raise enough funds to...
