- Industry: Education
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Accelerators are ring-shaped or linear devices that accelerate charged particles. More powerful than any other microscope, high-energy accelerators allow physicists to study matter at the smallest scale human beings have ever seen, exposing the quarks inside a proton. At the same time, high-energy accelerators can produce collisions that recreate the conditions of the early universe, though in a much smaller volume. Creating tiny fireballs of high density and high temperature, physicists produce the particles that were abundant in the early universe, a trillionth of a second after the Big Bang. More.
Industry:Physics
All particles of ordinary matter (electrons, protons, neutrons) have anti-matter partners that appear identical in all respects (e.g. mass, spin) except that they have the opposite electric charge. We believe that in the Big Bang equal quantities of matter and antimatter were created. The fact that the universe now contains matter and not anti-matter is known as the matter-anti-matter asymmetry. Understanding how this asymmetry was produced is a major goal in particle physics and astrophysics.
Industry:Physics
Any of the particles from outer space that are continuously colliding with the Earth's atmosphere. They are mostly protons, with some nuclei, electrons, and photons. Their interactions with the atmosphere produce a variety of particles, including pions, muons, and neutrinos.
Industry:Physics
Exotic particles produced at accelerators are often very short-lived, and can transform into lighter, less exotic products, such as electrons and photons. This process of transformation is known as decay.
Industry:Physics
A fundamental constituent of matter. Along with protons and neutrons, electrons are the building blocks of atoms. They have negative electric charge.
Industry:Physics
A unit of energy equal to the amount kinetic energy an electron gains after being accelerated through an electric potential of 1 Volt. It can also be used as a unit of mass by applying Einstein's relation E=mc<sup>2</sup>.
Industry:Physics
photons of high energy. The most energetic forms of light are known as gamma rays.
Industry:Physics
