Particle accelerators are experimental techniques and associated infrastructures that use electromagnetic fields to accelerate charged particles, such as electrons, protons, or heavy ions, to high kinetic energies and control their trajectories for collision, beam-target, or irradiation experiments. They employ radiofrequency cavities, electrostatic fields, and magnetic optics (dipole, quadrupole, and higher-order magnets) to shape, focus, and steer beams with precise energy, emittance, and luminosity characteristics. As techniques, accelerators enable probing of fundamental interactions in high-energy physics, production of secondary particles (e.g., neutrons, mesons, synchrotron radiation), and finely controlled irradiation or imaging in materials science, nuclear physics, and medical and industrial applications.
While scientists are known for their dedication to their research, crawling on the floor to avoid electrocution for the sake of a measurement seems a little excessive. But this is what British physicist John Cockcroft and ...
General Physics
Oct 2, 2026
2
99
The Compact Accelerator System for Performing Astrophysical Research (CASPAR) recreates conditions inside stars to study how elements are made. The experiment recently restarted with a new target—the ninth element on the ...
Astronomy
Sep 23, 2026
0
17
Every second, particles zip through your body at nearly the speed of light. They rain down from a storm high in the sky, where cosmic rays, a powerful type of interstellar matter, constantly strike atoms in Earth's atmosphere. ...
Astronomy
Sep 14, 2026
0
55
Physicists at the University of Oxford have helped confirm that one of the strangest phenomena in physics—quantum entanglement—occurs even among some of the heaviest and most fleeting particles ever created. The discovery, ...
Quantum Physics
Sep 14, 2026
0
413
It's been said that a finely tuned ear knows the size and shape of a piano by merely listening to the instrument's notes. An international team of physicists has now devised an analogous approach to detect the universe's ...
General Physics
Jul 24, 2026
0
155
What if the Higgs boson found in 2012 is not alone but is the only sibling we have encountered so far? Scientists at CERN discovered the particle that year, and it was a major discovery because it explained how other particles ...
General Physics
Jul 23, 2026
0
82
Deep beneath the French-Swiss border, the world's largest scientific instrument has fallen silent. After years of smashing protons together at nearly the speed of light, CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has stopped operations ...
General Physics
Jul 17, 2026
0
43
The world's most powerful particle accelerator will shutter operations Monday for four years of renovations to dramatically boost its collision capacity and the potential for unlocking one of the greatest mysteries of the ...
General Physics
Jun 27, 2026
5
812
Physicists at UC Santa Cruz and other institutes across California and New Mexico have developed a detection system that will allow next-generation particle accelerators to better reveal fundamental biological and chemical ...
General Physics
Jun 18, 2026
0
105
Scientists studying particle collisions at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) usually capture what happens when atomic nuclei smash into one another at nearly the speed of light. But even when the nuclei don't collide, ...
General Physics
Jun 17, 2026
0
42
