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Article: $600 million accelerator could castlight on subatomic secrets. (Continuous Electron Beam Accelerator Facility, Newport News, Virginia; includes related article)
- Article from:
- Insight on the News
- Article date:
- February 6, 1995
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1995 News World Communications, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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A new underground research center in Virginia will let scientists look inside protons and neutrons to study quarks, the basic components of matter, and gluons, the massless particles that bind quarks together.
One-and-a-half-billion times a second, 24 hours a day, they race around the seven-eighths-of-a-mile track, accelerating toward the speed of light and aiming for a single collision. The concept is simple: The Continuous Electron Beam Accelerator Facility, or CEBAF, smashes electrons into nuclei at energies up to 6 billion electron-volts -- enough to illuminate a space a trillionth of a millimeter across.
"CEBAF is the world's most powerful electron ...