Eli5: Shouldn’t linear accelerators be obsolete?

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There are 2 types of atom smashers: linear and circular. Linacs (linear accelerators) are in a line, while the other is a circle. Shouldn’t linacs be not as good as circular accelerators since circular colliders have unlimited space to accelerate while linacs have a limited amount? I understand it might need more force to go in a circle but the length makes up for it.

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Anonymous 0 Comments

I watched a talk about a year ago by some people doing research on plasma physics, and iirc they talked about plasma particle accelerators, which are linear, and actually *much* more efficient than the circular accelerators we have now.

The only problem is they’re just super hard to make. But if they get better at it, iirc they said a linear plasma accelerator thats like 30 feet long could be as good as CERN LHC.

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