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Shrinking the accelerator

Scientists plan to use a newly awarded grant to develop a shoebox-sized particle accelerator in five years.

Although they might be invisible to the naked eye, contaminants less than a micron in size can ruin very sensitive experiments in particle physics.

Many physics degree programs excel at preparing students for an academic career, but more than half of those who complete the programs head to industry instead.

Physicists looked at gobs of data on planetary orbits to look for tiny anomalies that couldn’t be explained by either Isaac Newton’s theory of gravity — in which gravity is a force between objects that depends on their masses — or Einstein’s general relativity theory, which says gravity is a warping of space-time itself.

In a landmark study, scientists at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands reported that they had conducted an experiment that they say proved one of the most fundamental claims of quantum theory — that objects separated by great distance can instantaneously affect each other’s behavior.