Particle accelerators are often framed as exotic machines built only to chase obscure particles, but they are really precision tools that use electric fields and magnets to steer tiny beams of matter ...

In 1820, Hans Christian Oersted gave a demonstration on electricity to a class of advanced students at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark. Using an early battery prototype, he looked to see what ...

The phenomenon of crystal channeling, whereby charged particles are guided along the interatomic corridors of a crystalline material, continues to yield transformative advances in particle beam ...

Alex Bogacz, a senior scientist at the U.S. Department of Energy's Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility since 1997, has spent his career in accelerator physics solving problems. From ...

The particles that are in an atom: protons, neutrons and electrons The particles that are in protons and neutrons: quarks The four fundamental forces: gravity, electromagnetism, the strong force and ...

Scientists have successfully developed a pocket-sized particle accelerator capable of projecting ultra-short electron beams with laser light at more than 99.99% of the speed of light. To achieve this ...

Laser physicists have built a novel hybrid plasma accelerator. Particle accelerators have become an indispensable tool for studies of the structure of matter at sub-atomic scales, and have important ...

Some of the most fundamental questions about our universe are also the most difficult to answer. Questions like what gives matter its mass, what is the invisible 96 percent of the universe made of, ...

A cluster of recent theoretical papers has laid out mathematical frameworks for propelling spacecraft at speeds ranging from ...

Scientists have succeeded in creating an experimental model of an elusive kind of fundamental particle called a skyrmion in a beam of light. Scientists at the University of Birmingham have succeeded ...

An ancient crocodile’s last meal might never have come to light were it not for researchers deciding to scan the rock-embedded fossil with a beam of neutrons. The scientists had set out to see if ...