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 ...

Physicists are learning to carve laser beams into intricate shapes that can grab hold of electrons and push them with a ...

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 ...

In the future, quantum computers are anticipated to solve problems once thought unsolvable, from predicting the course of ...

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 ...

Deep beneath the border of France and Switzerland is the most massive, most ambitious experiment ever undertaken by humanity. The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is a particle accelerator that uses a ...

Muons are getting a move on. In a step toward new types of particle physics experiments, scientists cooled and then accelerated a beam of muons. The subatomic particles, heavy cousins of electrons, ...

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Once a surprise to physicists, these particles are useful tools inside and outside the realm of particle physics.

Using the Super Proton Synchrotron, the team created beams of electron-positron pairs and passed them through a meter-long region of plasma. This setup served as a scaled laboratory version of a ...

In their final moments, the last protons flew at nearly the speed of light. They completed the 27-kilometer loop underneath the Alpine countryside 11,245 times a second until they were released from ...