Backyard Particle Accelerators

[Jason]

Physicists Develop a New Method to Accelerate Charged Particles
Physicists at the Max Planck Institute have developed a new method that uses light to accelerate charged particles, leading the way for more compact particle accelerators.

Modern particle accelerators measure up to several kilometers in size and cost billions of euros. But thanks to a new method they could shrink to less than 10 meters and cost 10 times less in future.

http://scitechdaily.com/physicists-deve ... particles/

Soon every budding physicist will be able to have a particle accelerator of their very own.

[mistermack]

It has a lot of possibilities, if it can be developed.
Attach one to your space-craft, and once you're out of orbit, you could just leave it accelerating you 24/7.
Eventually you could be up to a significant fraction of light speed.
Depends how much energy it needs I suppose.

[cronus]

Military have always wanted them ray guns.

[mistermack]

Military have always wanted them ray guns.

Yeh, especially as a space-weapon, for knocking out enemy satellites.
I suppose it could be used to clean up space-debris too. Aim it at a lump, and force it down out of orbit.

[rainbow]

Big deal.

We in Africa have had these for years:

[mistermack]

I have had my own particle accelerator since the day I was born.
Gas particles.
Gas particles my arse !

[JimC]

The Sethian reply would no doubt be NIMBY...

[mistermack]

It has a lot of possibilities, if it can be developed.
Attach one to your space-craft, and once you're out of orbit, you could just leave it accelerating you 24/7.
Eventually you could be up to a significant fraction of light speed.
Depends how much energy it needs I suppose.

Actually, thinking about it, you wouldn't gain anything by accelerating the particles, that you wouldn't get by just shooting light out of the craft. With the conservation of momentum, the effect would be the same. There is already the working technology of the Ion thruster which has been tested in space.

[cronus]

Takes a lot of energy to smoothly accelerate electrons and protons and suchlike. Size is only half the puzzle if you want to make one of these things into a rocket engine. You'd need to take a nuclear power-plant into orbit - the greenies would throw a fit.