You could be forgiven for thinking the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory's glory days
are long over.
The particle accelerator, originally called the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center when built in 1962 next to the prestigious university, extends west from the campus, slipping underneath Interstate 280 into the rolling, oak-dotted hills of Palo Alto, California. Its beam of high-speed electrons led to four Nobel Prizes, mostly for work in the 1960s and 1970s fleshing out the family of elementary particles like quarks that make up the matter in the universe.
But you can only discover charmed quarks once. At SLAC, scientists have been working to teach the old dog new tricks, and that could lead to breakthroughs in down-to-earth areas from building better batteries to the fight against cancer.
Also, those new tricks start with a really big laser. So that's cool. https://www.cnet.com/news/particle-accelerator-tackles-cancer-cures-and-better-batteries/
