Lining up for a new atom smasherMarch 16, 1999The physicists are coming to Oxford for the ECFA/DESY Linear Collider Workshop, from 20-23 March. Here they will develop plans for two 10-km long particle accelerators which will be accurately aligned to fire beams of electrons and positrons (anti-electrons) at each other. When matter and antimatter collide, they disappear - annihilate - in a burst of energy. The energy then rematerialises as new particles of matter (and antimatter) in processes that echo the first instants of the early Universe. To test their theories of these processes, physicists need to study higher energies than they can currently create - and in effect, go further back in time towards the origins of the Universe. Physicists already shoot beams of electrons and positrons at each other in circular machines, but the beams lose hard-won energy as they travel round the bends. The highest energies practical in a circular machine have been achieved at LEP, the Large Electron Positron collider at the European Laboratory for Particle Physics, CERN, in Geneva. LEP is due to reach a total energy of 200 GeV (giga electronvolts) this summer, but physicists need more than this to test theories that predict new effects at higher energies. So, they plan to build an electron-positron collider without bends by firing beams from linear accelerators at each other. The goal with the proposed linear collider is to aim for a total energy of 1000 GeV. To get this far will require challenging technologies, and at present three rival schemes are being pursued in Europe, Japan and the US. Whichever scheme is finally chosen, the billion-pound-scale project will offer great opportunities for hi-tech industry in the UK to supply advanced components. Other areas of science should also benefit from the new technologies needed, in particular biomedical research requiring high-energy X-rays from free-electron lasers. CERN |
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