After nearly a decade in development, the second iteration of the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) at the DoE's Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) is nearly ready to start throwing photons ...

Particle accelerators, also known as particle colliders or atom smashers, have been responsible for some of the most exciting physics findings over the past century, including the discovery of the ...

Just a few hundred feet from where we are sitting is a large metal chamber devoid of air and draped with the wires needed to control the instruments inside. A beam of particles passes through the ...

A particle accelerator's $1 billion upgrade could lead to improvements in electronic gear. Also in SLAC's sights: better batteries and cancer treatments. Stephen Shankland worked at CNET from 1998 to ...

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 ...

When the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory at Stanford first opened its doors in 1966, it had already earned the distinction of housing the world's longest linear accelerator: A 3.2 kilometer ...

A particle accelerator sounds like it’d be something straight from a science-fiction novel, largely because most of us don’t really quite understand how they work and also because they do have a place ...

Imagine a machine that could identify the materials in a work of art in mere hours, determining when it was made, identifying modern-day forgeries, or even, in the case of metal jewelry, what mine a ...

While new equipment and technologies are impressive, the results are even more amazing. "The bottom line is we'll be able to save more lives," Northern Rockies Cancer Center president John Felton said ...