Electrons near speed of light in space

[fcpeace17]

http://www.spacedaily.com/news/stellar-02d.html
how would one go about reproducing these effects, have their been more studies since this study? basically it is saying that there is a way for magnetic fields to interact so that there is a "pocket" in which electrons are charged with extremely high energy and can travel at 80@ the speed of light. how can we bring this down to Earth and work with it in the lab? Evan

 

[paw]

Electrons are routinely accelerated to near light speed in particle accelerators here on Earth (LEP for example).

 

[ahrkron]

Just to expand on that, the fact that electrons are light and fundamental makes their collisions extremely clean.

At Fermilab, the collisions are made between protons and antiprotons instead; in that case, the main collision occurs between one quark from each proton/antiproton, but there is a lot more going on around. Lower energy collisions among the rest of the particles that make each particle (other quarks and the gluons inside it) produce a lot more particles and a much more difficult environment from which to extract conclusions about what hapened.

 

[selfAdjoint]

Just to expand on that, the fact that electrons are light and fundamental makes their collisions extremely clean.

At Fermilab, the collisions are made between protons and antiprotons instead; in that case, the main collision occurs between one quark from each proton/antiproton, but there is a lot more going on around. Lower energy collisions among the rest of the particles that make each particle (other quarks and the gluons inside it) produce a lot more particles and a much more difficult environment from which to extract conclusions about what hapened.

Yup, and this is why each new generation of colliders has always been accompanied by a new generation of linear electron accelerators. Prettty much you have <colliders -> highest energy -> new particles>, (linears -> cleanest signals -> new laws>. For example all the upper division quarks were discovered at colliders, but the anomalous scaling that led to asymptotic freedom was discovered at SLAC, a linear accelerator.

There is an international initiative under way now to build a next-generation linear accelerator tocomplement the LHC, the new collider being built at CERN.