the size of a few shipping containers instead of a city has been developed by a private Texas-based company.that could allow particle accelerator technology to be accessible for any institution who needs it. According to TAU, this would allow the creation of custom medicines, break down microplastics and even eliminate nuclear waste.
This compact accelerator generates powerful X-rays by using intense lasers to accelerate elementary particles to close to the speed of light, however, instead of around in a circle as seen"We're basically taking a normal particle accelerator, which is the size of a campus, right, but now with our technology we can fit it into a room," Hegelich said.
"A plasma is when you rip all the electrons off the atoms: once you've done that, there's really nothing else you can do to damage it more than that. So the laser generates a tremendously strong electric field. And that means we can make the distance over which we accelerate much smaller."