Particle Accelerators

End view of a collision of two gold beams in the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider
Photo courtesy Brookhaven National Laboratory

Introduction:

Where do we come from??

It is a question that has plagued both philosophers and scientists throughout human existance.

Particle accelerators are helping us find an answer to this age old question.

The idea behind a particle accelerator, "atom smasher," is to take a single particle, say an electron or proton, and get it going really really fast. When you have it going very near the speed of light you crash it into an atom and observe what happens. By looking at the resulting pariticles that come from these collisions you are able to deduce many things. Particle accelerators are allowing us to look more and more closely at what matter is made up of, how it's held together, and what happened at the very begining of our universe.