The Accelerator

In 1962, in the rolling hills west of Stanford University, construction began on what was then the longest and straightest structure in the world, the Stanford Linear Accelerator, or linac. It took four years to build and was affectionately known as "the Monster" to the scientists who conjured it. Building the 2-mile-long structure was an engineering challenge that required taking the Earth’s curvature into account (a 20-inch shift in the vertical axis). Electrons fired from one end of the gallery reached 99.999% of the speed of light in the first meter of their flight down the accelerator and collided with a target or particle beam at the other end.

Of the four Nobel prizes awarded to SLAC scientists, three were for discovering novel elementary particles using the linac. Today the SLAC linac provides a unique source of X-ray laser pulses for investigating matter at the smallest and fastest scales at the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) as well as serving as a testbed for R&D into future accelerator technologies.