In a first, physicists accelerate atoms in the Large Hadron Collider
The successful test may mean the particle accelerator could be used as a gamma-ray factory
By
Emily Conover
1:42pm, July 31, 2018
Not content with protons and atomic nuclei, physicists took a new kind of particle for a spin around the world’s most powerful particle accelerator.
On July 25, the Large Hadron Collider, located at the laboratory CERN in Geneva, accelerated ionized lead atoms, each containing a single electron buddied up with a lead nucleus. Each lead atom normally has 82 electrons, but researchers stripped away all but one in the experiment, giving the particles an electric charge. Previously, the LHC had accelerated only protons and the nuclei of atoms, without any electron hangers-on.
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/physicists-accelerate-atoms-large-hadron-collider-first-time
