Physicists have spent decades building colossal machines to hurl subatomic particles to near light speed, but the newest frontier in accelerator technology is smaller than a fingernail. By etching ...

Machines like cyclotrons and synchrotrons help scientists recreate the conditions of the Big Bang and probe the very edges of particle physics. They also tend to be very big. Now, a new study details ...

Scientists recently fired up the world's smallest particle accelerator for the first time. The tiny technological triumph, which is around the size of a small coin, could open the door to a wide range ...

Once a year, the Large Hadron Collider smashes lead ions. But how do scientists get a heavy metal into a particle accelerator? Inside an ordinary-looking cupboard in an ordinary-looking office, ...

Twenty-five feet below ground, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory scientist Spencer Gessner opens a large metal picnic basket. This is not your typical picnic basket filled with cheese, bread and ...

This orientation map of a nitrogen-doped sample of niobium shows the formation of niobium nitrides (rainbow-colored shards) within grains and along grain boundaries (the grain boundaries shown are the ...