Plasma particle accelerators more powerful than existing machines could help probe some of the outstanding mysteries of our universe, as well as make leaps forward in cancer treatment and security scanning – all in a package that’s around a thousandth of the size of current accelerators. All that’s left is for scientists to build one.
If you know what a particle accelerator is, you probably think first of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) – that gargantuan ring on the Franco-Swiss border that smashes protons and ions together, exposing the secrets of the subatomic world.
Built by the European lab CERN, the LHC accelerates particles to the kinds of speeds found during the eruption of the early universe. To do so, it needs a very, very big circumference – 27 kilometres.
Yet the LHC is already finding limits to what it can explore. Physicists want even more powerful accelerators – but building one much bigger than the LHC is hard to contemplate. […]
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