Eli5: What advancements have been made as a direct result of the use of particle accelerators?

Question

I recently saw a Cleo Abrams video about particle accelerators and the lead scientist said that they use particle accelerators to create the building blocks for future innovations.

I’m sure advancements have been made only because particle accelerators exist but I don’t know any. Can someone highlight a direct influence particle accelerators have on our daily lives?

In: Physics

Answer 1

The most famous advancement was by Tim Berners-Lee, who wanted to facilitate sharing and updating information among researchers. So he wrote a software program called ENQUIRE, this was the first Wiki (1980).

In 1989, he proposed and later prototyped a new hypertext project in response to a request for a simple, immediate, information-sharing facility, to be used among physicists working at CERN and other academic institutions. He called the project “WorldWideWeb”.