There is a good chance that soon a new door will open to physicists, offering them new insights into the mysteries of the universe. The international AWAKE collaboration has made a breakthrough in its efforts to build a new type of particle accelerator. The experiment, in which electrons surf on a plasma wave, accelerates particles with far less effort than is required with the LHC, for example, or with other particle accelerators used to date. Thus, physicists could bring about particle collisions with significantly more energy than has been possible so far. Studying the traces of these collisions may help scientists to gain new insights into the Big Bang and the structure of matter.
Protons accelerate electrons The pathway to new particle accelerators: In the tunnel