Pushy lasers sweep into ion race.Compared with huge particle accelerators, lasers are little. The possibility of using intense laser beams to accelerate electrons to high speeds in a limited space has sparked numerous lines of research (SN: 2/10/96, p. 95; 9/5/98, p. 157). Now, scientists find that lasers can also accelerate much heavier particles, such as protons and still weightier ions. At the American Physical Society The American Physical Society was founded in 1899 and is the world's second largest organization of physicists. The Society publishes more than a dozen science journals, including the world renowned Physical Review and Physical Review Letters, and organizes more than twenty science Division of Plasma Physics Noun 1. plasma physics - the branch of physics concerned with matter in its plasma phase natural philosophy, physics - the science of matter and energy and their interactions; "his favorite subject was physics" meeting in Seattle last month, three independent research groups announced the discovery of this promising laser talent. Their findings suggest that relatively compact, laser-based accelerators may be on the horizon for use in medical treatments, isotope production, and electronics manufacturing This article presents a typical manufacturing process of an electronic assembly. Component manufacturing Components such as resistors, capacitors and integrated circuits are generally made by specialized contractors. . To scientists at Lawrence Livermore Lawrence Livermore may refer to:
v. seared, sear·ing, sears v.tr. 1. To char, scorch, or burn the surface of with or as if with a hot instrument. See Synonyms at burn1. 2. beam of 30 trillion protons, with energies up to 50 million electronvolts (MeV)--burst from the far side of the target. Not ordinarily at large in gold, the protons must have come from a film of oil and other contaminants that had settled on the target, says Livermore's Stephen P. Hatchett II. For controlled proton sources, laser accelerators could use plastic targets cleaned of contaminants by a weaker pulse, he says. In other experiments, researchers at the University of Michigan (body, education) University of Michigan - A large cosmopolitan university in the Midwest USA. Over 50000 students are enrolled at the University of Michigan's three campuses. The students come from 50 states and over 100 foreign countries. in Ann Arbor reported accelerating some 10 billion protons to energies of about a tenth of those reached with the Livermore laser. They used a much smaller laser with one-thousandth the power of the Livermore machine. Meanwhile, researchers at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory The Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL) at the Chilton/Harwell Science Campus is a UK scientific research laboratory near Didcot in Oxfordshire. It has a staff of around 1,200 who support the work of over 10,000 scientists and engineers, mainly from the university research in Oxfordshire, England, announced detecting not only protons at energies up to 17 MeV but also lead ions accelerated to 420 MeV. Those heavy ions, however, did not emerge as a beam. |
|
||||||||||||||||||||
Printer friendly
Cite/link
Email
Feedback
Reader Opinion