By now, you might be familiar with the concept of particle accelerators through the work of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the monstrous accelerator that enabled scientists to detect the Higgs boson.
But the LHC is not alone — the world is equipped with more than 3o,000 particle accelerators that are used for a seemingly endless variety of tasks. Some of these machines, like the LHC, accelerate particles to nearly the speed of light to smash them together and probe the fundamental building blocks of our universe. Others are used to seal milk cartons and bags of potato chips.
Image: It's kind of like a microscope on steroids.Brookhaven National Laboratory
