What does a particle accelerator do and how is it useful to us?
In: Planetary Science
Particle accelerators cause a collection of atomic or subatomic particles, such as metal ions or protons, to accelerate to very high speeds (close to the speed of light) by using electromagnetic fields to push them forward. Most of them these days are “cyclotrons,” meaning the track is circular, so they can keep putting more and more energy in (up to very high energy). Once the particles are up to speed, they are released to hit a target of some kind, usually a very pure, very small sample of metal.
When the beam of fast particles hits the target, most of the particles will sail right through, because matter is mostly empty space. But a small number of them will hit the atoms of the target, adding an enormous amount of energy very, very fast. This usually causes the hit atoms to be torn apart, spraying all sorts of other particles around the target chamber.
With modern particle accelerators, the target chamber is surrounded by layers of detectors that use semiconductors (like the processor chips that make your computer work), which respond when energetic particles fly through them. That’s how we “see” what sprayed out of the target when it was hit by the beam. By looking at the data for how that spray of particles moved, we can determine how much mass they had, how much charge, and how fast they were moving. This information can be used to prove the existence of particles we didn’t know about before.
This is useful because it lets us test our theories about particle physics. Understanding more about these particles can help us develop new technologies, but it’s also just useful for pure scientific understanding, even if it doesn’t lead to any new applications.
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