Particle Accelerator facts
While investigating facts about Particle Accelerator Accident and Particle Accelerator Cern, I found out little known, but curios details like:
The United States spent more than $2 billion digging 24km of tunnels in Texas for a particle accelerator similar in scope to CERN, only to abandon the project.
how particle accelerator works?
In 2010 the RIKEN institute in Japan created mutant cherry blossom trees by firing ion beams at them in a particle accelerator. The mutated trees now bloom 4 times a year and produce more flowers.
What is a particle accelerator?
In my opinion, it is useful to put together a list of the most interesting details from trusted sources that I've come across answering what does a particle accelerator do. Here are 50 of the best facts about Particle Accelerator Crossword and Particle Accelerator Remnant I managed to collect.
what particle accelerators are used for?
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When congress asked physicist R.R. Wilson to justify the US government spending millions of dollars on a new particle accelerator (Fermilab), Wilson testified that the knowledge gained from it would have "nothing to do directly with defending our country except to help make it worth defending."
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In 1978, a Russian physicist, Anatoli Bugorski, was struck accidentally by the proton beam of a particle accelerator. 1/2 of his face swelled beyond recognition and became paralysed. Amazingly, he survived and completed his PhD. He is still alive today.
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Those really thin fridge magnets are a special type of magnet called a Halbach array that has almost no magnetic field on one side - these were originally designed for use in particle accelerators.
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Building a time machine is believed to be scientifically possible but requires building a gigantic particle accelerator in space, stabilizing space-time foam, plucking out a wormhole, enlarging it and connecting it a gravitational field.
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There is an abandoned particle accelerator in Texas that was supposed to be 3 times bigger than the LHC
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Though alchemists never succeeded in transmuting lead to gold, in 1981 physicists used the particle accelerator at Berkeley to shoot Carbon nuclei at thin foils of Bismuth- the resulting collisions did produced a tiny amount of Gold atoms
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Sesame, a particle accelerator being built in the Middle East. Modelled on CERN which was set up after WW2 to bring together scientists from former adversaries in Europe, it allows researchers from openly hostile countries to collaborate. Israel, Iran and Palestine are founding members.
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In the 1970s, physicists used a diapered ferret to assist them in cleaning the inside of a particle accelerator. The ferret, named Felicia, made dozens of runs before retiring as a pet on a mink farm.
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The russian scientist Anatoli Bugorski got struck in the face by a proton beam in a particle accelerator, and survived. He described the sensation as seeing a light "brighter than a thousand suns"
Particle Accelerator data charts
For your convenience take a look at Particle Accelerator figures with stats and charts presented as graphic.
Why particle accelerators are used?
You can easily fact check why do we need particle accelerators by examining the linked well-known sources.
Anatoli Bugorski, a Russian scientist, survived being hit directly in the face by a particle accelerator beam.
Russian scientist Anatoli Bugorski was working on the Synchrotron U-70, the largest Soviet particle accelerator in 1978. A proton beam measuring about 200,000 rads entered his skull, and 300,000 rads when it exited. Due to nerve destruction, the left half of his face was frozen and doesn’t age. - source
During the Cold War, students at Stuyvesant High School built a particle accelerator in their school's basement. However, when they powered it on, it "tanked the electrical system for the building and surrounding area." > $10,000 were spent on the machine, but no one knows what happened to it. - source
In 1978, a man stuck his head in an active particle accelerator - half his face stopped aging since.
Raccoons lead a coordinated attack on the TeV particle accelerator in Illinois. - source
When was the first particle accelerator built?
In 1971 physicists bought a ferret for $35 to clean out the largest particle accelerator built up to that date. The ferret, which they named Felicia, was spooked by the long dark tube so never quite worked out. She was supposed to drag a cleaning cloth behind her through the tube.
How particle accelerators are used to study the early universe?
There's a particle accelerator under the Louvre
Michio Kaku built a particle accelerator in his parents garage as a high school science project
Theoretical physicist Michio Kaku built a particle accelerator for a high school science fair in hopes of creating antimatter.
While in high school he built a particle accelerator for the National Science Fair.
Near Waxahachie, Texas are abandoned remains of a particle Collider. The system, known as the Superconducting Super Collider, was intended to be the world's largest particle accelerator, with a ring circumference of 54 miles. It would have had five times the energy of even today’s LHC collisions