Forget the Large Hadron Collider – our team has designed a particle accelerator the size of a large room

By Gianluca Sarri, Reader (Associate Professor) at the School of Mathematics and Physics, Queen's University Belfast

In 2010, when scientists were preparing to smash the first particles together within the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), sections of the media fantasised that the EU-wide experiment might create a black hole that could swallow and destroy our planet. How on Earth, columnists fumed, could scientists justify such a dangerous indulgence in the pursuit of abstract, theoretical knowledge?

But particle accelerators are much more than enormous toys for scientists…

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