Science: Biggest Accelerator

For ten months the world's most powerful particle accelerator (or atom smasher) was at Geneva, Switzerland, generating a beam of protons with up to 28 Bev (billion electron-volts) of energy. Last week the energy championship came back to the U.S. At Brookhaven National Lab oratory, Long Island, the new alternating gradient synchroton, which scientists call AGS, was kicked up to full power for the first time, generating a proton beam that stayed steady at 30 Bev and hovered for short periods as high as 31 Bev, accelerating particles at rates only a fraction...

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