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

This is like saying a pistol is obsolete because of rifles so we should stop using them.

I’m not that deep into accelerators, and while it is true that circular are “better”, it will all depend on what you need an accel for. If your experiment requires data easily achievable by a simple linear, why bother going into the queues of circular accelerators?

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