Accelerators for America's Future
A report from the field on the vital roles that accelerators play in energy, the environment, medicine, industry, national security and defense, and discovery science will inform strategic planning for accelerator science and technology by the Department of Energy’s Office of Science.
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Editorial:
Accelerators for the future goodIf scientists just wanted improved medical diagnostics or better packaging materials or more effective cargo scanning, they could probably solve those problems without a full accelerator program. But we’d miss out on the big leaps of technology that come only from basic research.
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Commentary:
Dennis Kovar"As particle physicists, we must deliver great science. We must also demonstrate that investment in particle physics drives innovations in technologies that are essential not only for the future of our own and many other fields of science, but for the well-being of the nation as a whole."
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Department:
Signal to BackgroundA flippy way to tell which way is north; a fan and her plushie meet the father of the God Particle; dad-son team mines rock and science; softball crosses the pond; Alan Alda tells scientists to spread the love; a notepad with a peel; letter
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Department:
symmetrybreakingA summary of recent stories, published online in symmetrybreaking, www.symmetrymagazine.org/blog/aug2010
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Feature:
New Imaging Tools From the LHCTechnology developed for the Large Hadron Collider is changing the way we see our bodies.
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Feature:
The Do-it-Yourself CyclotronAmateur cyclotron builders are dedicated, tenacious, and obsessed. Another thing they have in common: The experience changes their lives.
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Gallery:
Kate NicholsAn artist’s search for a new way to create color with nanoparticles could compel science to ask a few new questions of its own.
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Deconstruction:
Isotope ProductionPhysicians use the radioactive isotope technetium- 99m in more than 80 percent of medical imaging procedures. But now its global supply is in jeopardy. Scientists at Canada’s national laboratory TRIUMF are responding with a plan to investigate alternative and more efficient ways to produce medical isotopes.
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Accelerator Apps:
Cargo ScanningA growing number of ports and border crossings are turning to high-energy X-rays generated by particle accelerators to keep cargo safe and block contraband from entering the country.
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Logbook:
Strong FocusingIn the summer of 1952, physicists at Brookhaven National Laboratory began brainstorming ways to improve accelerator design. Ernest Courant came up with the idea of “strong focusing,” which dramatically increased accelerator power and put today’s enormous machines within practical reach.
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Explain it in 60 Seconds:
RedshiftRedshift is the observed change in the color of light emitted by a star or other celestial object that is moving away from Earth. In the 1990s, astronomers measuring the redshifts of bright, distant objects discovered that the universe is expanding at an increasing rate.
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Although the superstars of the particle accelerator world are giant
research machines such as Fermilab's Tevatron and CERN’s Large
Hadron Collider, there are also tens of thousands of accelerators
at work in medicine and industry. In this Illinois plant, for example,
a beam of accelerated electrons makes polymer coatings for wire
and cable more heat resistant. The $3.5 billion market for medical
and industrial accelerators is growing at more than 10 percent per
year. (See "Accelerators for America's Future,".)
Photos: Reidar Hahn, Fermilab
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