The World's Smallest Particle Accelerator

Physicists just built the world’s smallest particle accelerator! The whole thing can fit on a DIME. Here’s how this works and why it matters...

You might’ve heard of a particle accelerator called the Large Hadron Collider.
It’s a 17 mile (27km) underground tunnel where particles speed up to nearly the speed of light, and then smashed together! This tiny new particle accelerator created by researchers at FAU is 54 million times smaller than that. Instead of a big loop, it shoots electrons into a channel of hundreds of tiny silicon pillars, each just 2 micrometers tall. (For reference, FIFTY micrometers is the diameter of a human hair!)

The goal with the Large Hadron Collider is to study particle collisions. But the goal with this tiny particle accelerator is to one day make it into highly-targeted way of killing cancer cells. You could imagine sticking this tiny accelerator on the end of a scope into the patient’s body, exactly where you’d want to treat with precise radiation. Right now though, this accelerator is too weak, they’d need to make it a lot more powerful. But for now, this is an exciting proof-of-concept. And it’s just plain wild to me that we can accelerate particles at all - in a massive tunnel or the size of a dime.

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And if you enjoyed this video, we have a longer episode coming soon that you'll love...

#shorts #physics #cern #animation #tiny #particleaccelerator

[Zekiraeth]

Fighting cancer with the world's tiniest GUN

[dannymartial]

I love all scientists and engineers actively working to cure cancer

[jasonfitt]

Radiation: gives you cancer
Scientist: uno reverse

[thewafflegamer]

Cancer: “haha you can’t defeat me!”
Doctor: *proceeds to use railgun*

[humha]

*turns on monitor
Doctor: "And here's how your final cancer cell was killed."
*cues to 2008 MLG COD montage

[TmaGluZlcM]

Doctors: We can't cure cancer.
Physicists: Well, let's just shoot it.

[Lucas_S]

Put the tiny particle accelerator in the big particle accelerator so you can accelerate particles while you accelerate particles.

[lokeshgnanasekar]

Particle Accelerator ❌
Particle Sized Accelerator ✅

[levilemming]

I love how all of our science pretty much comes full circle to “hitting two things together until something interesting happens”

[ElmoTerminator]

**Points at person**
“ABRACADABRA”
**Person blows up in white light**

[ben]

The glow on your face is the reason I watch your videos. I see this only on people who are passionate about what they talk about, which means you are genuinely excited about the content you post. Plus, I too hope to be someday like you.

[jonathand.terrell]

Cleo found her true calling as a video journalist. Great job. Love your genuine enthusiasm!!

[scottallen]

The pipeline of a piece of tech:
Invent something
Make it small
Make it mass producable.

[ItzRyan]

We ain't curing any cancer we becoming Flash baby🤣🤣

[wld]

Alright now all we need is a lightning storm…

[sulanis]

I love her natural smile with talking about this exciting advancement. She also makes it very easy to listen to and understand the concenpts in the topic.

[KatieDeGo]

As someone who works in a medical lab and helps diagnose cancer, I am SO GLAD TO SEE THIS!!! It is so difficult to see our patients lose their battles with cancer 😢

[kpp]

The human way of solving problems has always been to make things go really fast, throw something at said problem, or a combination of both

[ST-nospam]

I literally found your channel <2 days ago and I'm already hooked!!

[skygoneinc]

Actually I think it's a perfecly average sized partical accelarator :*)