Latest Particle accelerators Stories

According to the European Organization for Nuclear Research, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is expected to be restarted by this weekend after over a year of repairs. Spokesman James Gillies says scientists have refrained from setting an exact date for sending beams of protons around the 17-mile circular tunnel housing the world's largest atom smasher. Gillies says the organization known as CERN is taking its time with the sophisticated equipment. The LHC was launched last year before...

A time-varying bubble of electron density in the wake of an ultra-intense laser pulse traps the ambient plasma electrons and accelerates them to high energy producing collimated monoenergetic beams for medical, technological, and physics applications.ATLANTA"”Particle accelerators are among the largest and most expensive scientific instruments. Thirty years ago, theorists John Dawson and Toshiki Tajima proposed an idea for making them thousands of times smaller: surf the particles on plasma...

Scientists leverage special relativity to speed up computational modeling and open a new era for designing advanced laser-plasma acceleratorsUsing Einstein's theory of special relativity to speedup computer simulations, scientists have designed laser-plasma accelerators with energies of 10 billion electron volts (GeV) and beyond. These systems, which have not been simulated in detail until now, could in the future serve as a compact new technology for particle colliders and energetic light...

Engineers have successfully injected beams of particles into two sections of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), marking the first time particle beams have been inside the LHC since it was shut down in September 2008, BBC News reported.Scientists working on the giant particle accelerator called it "a milestone" and plan to circulate a beam around the 16 mile-long tunnel in November.Last year, a magnet problem called a "quench" caused the LHC to leak a ton of liquid helium,...

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) experiment is now more frigid than deep space, making it one of the coldest locations in the Universe, BBC News reported.Recent adjustments in all eight sectors of the LHC have dropped the operating temperature to 1.9 kelvin (-271C; -456F).Liquid helium maintains the intense cold in nearly 17-mile long magnets that bend particle beams around the LHC.  The magnets are positioned end-to-end in a circular tunnel overlapping the Franco-Swiss border.The cool-down...

Controlling huge electromagnetic forces that have the potential to destroy the next generation of particle accelerators is the subject of a new paper by a University of Manchester physicist.So-called 'wake fields' occur during the process of acceleration and can cause particles to fly apart.The particles are traveling at extremely high energies "“ and if they are subjected to these wake fields, they can easily destroy the accelerators.In his paper 'Wake field Suppression in High Gradient...

After a widely publicized helium leak shut down the Large Hadron Collider last year, engineers began installing an early warning system they hope will prevent any similar problems, BBC News reported.When a "faulty splice" between magnets knocked the LHC offline last September, it delayed the start of science operations by more than a year.Now officials hope to restart the collider in mid November, where it will send two beams of particles crashing into each other at close to the...

The U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE's) Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility marked a step forward in the field of advanced particle accelerator technology with the successful test of the first U.S.-built superconducting radiofrequency (SRF) niobium cavity to meet the exacting specifications of the proposed International Linear Collider (ILC).  The cavity was developed as part of a DOE-funded R&D effort focused on developing technologies that would be required for an ILC, a...

The Large Hadron Collider will not become a white elephant, despite having operated just one week in the year since its debut, scientists in Switzerland said. The world's most powerful atom smasher began operation a year ago this month near Geneva amid great expectations it would recreate the conditions of the universe at its earliest infancy. A week later, the more than $8 billion collider broke down. Scientists have spent the last year replacing super magnets and inspecting parts designed...

The mysteries of the universe will remain unknown for a few months longer after the CERN announcement that the giant particle collider will restart in November. CERN, or the European Organization for Nuclear Research, says the restart will mean the world's biggest atom smasher will operate below full power. No more repairs would be necessary for "safe running" this year and next, according to a CERN statement. The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) promises to unlock scientific mysteries...