Scientists have demonstrated that a promising technique for accelerating electrons on waves of hot plasma is efficient enough to power a new generation of shorter, more economical accelerators.

Last year, a monster magnet set out from Brookhaven National Lab on an epic trek by land and sea to Fermilab, where it will serve as the heart of a search for evidence of new subatomic particles. Last month, researchers came to SLAC to test the eyes and nerves of the same experiment: a cutting-edge design for a new detector.

Following an absence of six years, beams of positrons – the antimatter twins of electrons – are once more streaming through SLAC's linear accelerator to waiting experiments.

SLAC recently hosted a forward-looking group of theoretical and experimental particle physicists. Their purpose: Follow the science to determine what a post-LHC collider could teach us about the universe.