Article: Vacuum science: a stronger suck.(CERN develops better 'getter' pumps to remove stray oxygen particles)(Brief Article)

BIRMINGHAM

AT THE 14th International Vacuum Congress, held in Birmingham at the beginning of September, hundreds of researchers got together to talk about nothing. Literally. For over a century, scientists have found increasingly effective ways of sucking air out of a chamber to make a vacuum, using ever more sophisticated pumps. The latest of these, reported by Cristoforo Benvenuti from CERN, the European high-energy physics laboratory, near Geneva, uses the walls of the vacuum chamber itself to do the pumping. This trick will not only help the builders of particle accelerators to improve the vacuum tubes in which their particles travel. It could also offer ...