FRIDAY SURPRISE: Smashing!

Friday, July 10, 2009 Filed in: Friday Surprise!, Technology

Heard of the Large Hadron Collider? It's the world's largest particle accelerator, located on the French/Swiss border. A particle accelerator, colloquially termed an 'atom smasher', is a device that uses electric fields to propel electrically-charged particles to high speeds. By colliding particles together - sort of a subatomic head-on crash - we can do all kinds of things. A low-energy accelerator forms the viewable image on a cathode-ray tube (CRT), medium-sized units are used to create isotopes for medical research, and the biggest, highest energy installations help scientists learn about the fundamental structure of the universe.

Long before the LHA was even conceived, the United States boasted the largest particle accelerator: the Bevatron at Lawrence Berkley National Laboratory. Built in the early 1950s, it had a nearly 50-year career before it was finally deemed too expensive to maintain. Mothballed in 1993, the decision was recently made to dismantle the gigantic machine to make room for new research facilities on the crowded campus.

Wired has a great article, with many pictures, on the continuing demolition.

 -=[ Grant ]=-
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