Table-top Particle Accelerator Created

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?'"

Re:Been around for years

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, it's been around for ages. The article even mentions explicitely that this is a decade-old idea. It also says that it has been very difficult to fine-tune this idea. This is what these guys did.

I suggest that you update the Wikipedia article about plasma acceleration...

Re:Been around for years

[slashkitty]

In fact, you probably have a table top particle accelerator in your house. http://science.howstuffworks.com/atom-smasher2.htm [howstuffworks.com] Yes, a CRT is also considered a particle accelerator!

Re:Eat Banana

[Anonymous Coward]

Not quite, you forgot the flux. 300MeV is the energy per electron so you meant ~4e-11 J/electron. I did not RTFA, but I'm guessing the accelerator produced more than one electron. Also, don't forget, luminosity is also an important way to factor the problem --- electrons/area/sec. That being said, I'd be more concerned about the safety of the lasers they must be using to pump the system.

Re:They're not stupid

[Sangui5]

Don't forget all of the other stuff you get from spalling, like high energy X-rays. Actually, at 300MeV, I'd wager on getting a fairly decent gamma ray beam. Without a purpose built collimator, I'd guess that there'd be a good amount of "spray" all over the place. So you'd probably get a hole in a radioactive sandwich, plus a good dose of radiation just for standing nearby. Yes, a healthy dose life-giving radiation [nukees.com].

Remember, the Therac-25 system was quite lethal when it malfunctioned, and it "only" used a 25 MeV beam. 300MeV is a LOT of punch per particle, and if the intensity is high enough all sorts of nasty things will happen.