Table-top Particle Accelerator Created 55
holy_calamity writes "French physicists have built a desktop particle accelerator. It uses a pair of laser beams to precisely control the acceleration of electrons within a plasma. It has the power of a device that usually takes up a whole room and could lead to new medical treatments. They don't mention the potential for experiments like 'what happens if I put my lunch in front of a 300 megaelectronvolt beam?'"
Eat Banana (Score:3, Informative)
'what happens if I put my lunch in front of a 300 megaelectronvolt beam?'
Nothing you can see, because that's ~ 4e-11 J.
Chocolate bar (Score:3, Informative)
And don't use the term 'egghead'. It's origin is Nazi brown-shirts referring to how the skulls of intellectuals shatter when they hit the ground. (Or something equally violent.) We have enough anti-intellectualism in this country already.
Not quite (Score:2, Informative)
Re:They're not stupid (Score:3, Informative)
A laser beam is only going to cook/burn your lunch.
Re:They're not stupid (Score:2, Informative)