The worlds most advanced particle accelerator...

Prunepicker · Nov 9, 2014

... is just 12 inches long and sits on a lab bench in the US.

Pretty cool.

From Extreme Tech
As you probably know, particle accelerators are usually very large. Its not that we
want to spend billions of dollars boring out a 17-mile tunnel deep underground (or
even longer, in the case of some new accelerators that are being considered at
the moment). Its not like we choose to spend billions more creating a vacuum
tube in that tunnel, wrapping it in superconducting electromagnets, and
cryogenically freezing the whole thing. Its just that, until now, that was the only

way we knew how to reliably accelerate protons and electrons to close to the
speed of light.

According to SLAC, theres another method of particle acceleration thats much

more efficient, and can thus be used to build massive accelerators that are
orders of magnitude more powerful or alternatively, much smaller, lab-sized
accelerators. The technology is called plasma wakefield acceleration

wgabrie · Nov 10, 2014

Nice find!

This is a completely different state of matter from vacuum tube to heated concentrations of plasma.

I don't understand the differences or what that means but it's obviously going to be useful in the future. Very nice!

waltky · May 15, 2016

Granny says, "Dat's right - an' one o' these days one o' dem bumps gonna blow up the world...

Mysterious 'Bump' Baffles Fermilab Scientists Probing How World Works
May 11, 2016 It can't be seen with the naked eye, and it requires the power of the world's largest and most complex machine to find it. Yet it could change the very understanding of the known world of particle physics. Right now, though, it's simply a "bump."

"In particle physics, a bump is when you have a smooth data curve which is what you expect and you see a little excess, a little bump in the middle of it, and that often is indicative that you may have made a discovery of some kind," said scientist Don Lincoln. He's one of hundreds of scientists and researchers at Fermilab in suburban Chicago reviewing the data produced by experiments at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN, facility in Switzerland, which is home to the world's most powerful particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider, also known as the LHC. "Since about 1964," Lincoln explained, "we have invented a series of theories that, blended together, is called the Standard Model of Particle Physics and from that we can explain all data that we've taken. However, we can't explain this bump."

A $5.5 billion atom smasher, called the Large Hadron Collider, is housed at the CERN particle physics lab in Geneva, Switzerland

Which means this "bump" could represent a new particle previously unknown to scientists, and could fundamentally change understanding of particle physics. "If it is real, it's probably the biggest discovery of the last half century," Lincoln said. Then again, he adds, maybe it isn't. "It could be a discovery, or it could go away. It's in that sort of gray area," he added.

Long-distance collaboration

Fermilab, where Lincoln and other scientists sort through that gray area, is the home of the Tevatron accelerator, once the largest superconducting supercollider in the world. Though the Tevatron accelerator has been taken offline, and has been eclipsed by CERN's LHC, Fermilab remains at the forefront of particle physics. "We bring a certain amount of technology, know-how, to their machine because we started with a superconducting machine. So we have viable knowledge to bring to the table," said Fermilab's director, Nigel Lockyer.

Although the United States is one of the largest national collaborators for experiments conducted with the LHC in Switzerland, Lockyer noted that particle physics is now a more global exercise. "We're into a new era of relationship between CERN and Fermilab, or between the United States and Europe, intertwining our particle physics programs," he said. What helps the interaction are technological advances and global cooperation that allow scientists at Fermilab to remotely monitor and analyze data produced by the LHC's particle collisions some 7,000 kilometers away.

Everything, or nothing
Click to expand...

waltky · Dec 10, 2016

Granny says, "Dat's right - bet dat uses a lotta `lectricical...

Cryogenic storage offers hope for renewable energy
Sat, 10 Dec 2016 - The world's largest cold energy storage plant, which can act like a giant battery for renewable energy, is being commissioned at a site near Manchester.

The cryogenic energy facility stores power from renewables or off-peak generation by chilling air into liquid form. When the liquid air warms up it expands and can drive a turbine to make electricity. The 5MW plant near Manchester can power up to 5,000 homes for around three hours. The company behind the scheme, Highview Power Storage, believes that the technology has great potential to be scaled up for long-term use with green energy sources.

Peaks and troughs

Electricity demand varies, influenced by factors like time of day and season. The National Grid is prepared for surges in demand, with power stations on stand-by ready to crank up the power. However, dealing with these peaks and troughs will become increasingly difficult as coal-fired power stations close down and more intermittent renewable energy like wind and solar comes online. In 2015 renewables provided almost a quarter of UK electricity. The intermittent nature of green sources has seen researchers focus on trying to improve energy storage. Pumped hydropower can provide large amounts of energy for long durations, and lithium-ion batteries can respond to demand in milliseconds making them ideal for portable electronic devices and electric vehicles.

Cryogenic cold storage

But hydropower depends on specific geographies as water has to be pumped uphill, and batteries currently cannot be scaled in a cost effective way to store energy for a town or city. "Our technology is a bit like a locatable version of a pumped hydro system. Anywhere that needs large scale long-duration storage, that might be to help integrate an offshore wind farm, a system like ours can help achieve that," Gareth Brett from Highview Power explained, during a visit to the Manchester cryogenic site. "5MW is a bit small for this technology; anything from 10MW and up is the sort of scale we're talking about. "We've already designed a plant that can do 200MW /1200MWh, that's enough to keep a city going for 6 hours."

Cryogenic storage works by using renewable or off-peak electricity to cool air down to -190 degrees C, which turns it into a liquid. It's then stored in an insulated tank, similar to a large thermos flask. To release the stored energy, the liquid air is exposed to ambient conditions causing it to expand back into a gas. The volume increase is huge, about 700 times, which is used to drive a turbine to generate electricity. Highview Power's demonstrator plant is next to Pilsworth landfill gas generation site. The large insulated tanks sit across the road from a collection of gas engines. These engines burn methane gas produced from decomposing rubbish to generate electricity. The waste heat from this process is captured and used to increase the efficiency of the cryogenic process.

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