Fastest Waves Ever Photographed

starfoot writes, "Pictures of the fastest waves ever photographed, traveling at 99.997% of the speed of light, were presented today at the APS Division of Plasma Physics meeting in Philadelphia. The waves were formed in the wake of an intense laser pulse passing through a plasma of electrons and ionized atoms. The waves create enormous electric fields (over 100 billion electron volts/meter), which can be used to rapidly accelerate charged particles to high energies in the span of a few meters. The pictures will help scientists better understand wakefield interactions — an important factor in their quest to replace machines that accelerate particles over the course of miles with compact, tabletop versions. High energy particle accelerators are vital for cutting edge physics and many types of medical therapy, and miniaturizing them would be a boon for both basic physics research and medicine."

Re:Five 9s

[MBGMorden]

Which is 100% (not approximately, but exactly 100% :)). A lot of people are unaware and the concept seems a bit strange but .9(repeating 9) is equal to 1.

Just thought I'd take the time to throw in a piece of trivia. Carry on gentlemen :).

Re:Request for Clarification

[aditi]

Electron Volts per Meter (eV/m) is actually a perfectly valid measure of electric field. It's how much energy an electron going through the field would gain per meter. To get the actual electric field, you would just divide by the elementary charge e = 1.6*10^-19 C. In relativity and particle physics, one often sees masses expressed in eV/c^2 and momenta in eV/c. It's just a convenient notation to absorb unweildy constants such as e and c, and show the numbers that really matter.

Re:How easy is it?

[agentcdog]

How about: not even wrong. eV/m is a FIELD STRENGTH. eV = energy. 1eV is a small amount of energy, but you cannot apply any amounts of eV/m to any object. Remember phys 101? Dimensional analysis?
Haw did he get modded up? Modders: If you don't know what he's talking about, don't mod him insightful. I feel like that duck in the barber shop.
Note: You could imagine what would happen if you put a paperclip in this field, but without a net charge it aint movin'. If there were a net charge you better get out of the way of said paperclip, beause 100billion eV/m is a HUGE field strength which would give a HUGE amount of energy per electron. To give you an idea of scale, the electron's rest energy is about 500k eV.

Re:Five 9s

[all204]

Here is a neat little proof of this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.999 [wikipedia.org]

Re:How easy is it?

[Phanatic1a]

100 billion electron volts/meter sounds like a lot. In reality, if the same amount of physical energy

*Bzzzt*. Wrong with the second sentence.

100 GeV/m isn't an amount of physical energy. It's a field strength.

It's still not a lot on a macroscopic scale (about 1.6E-8 joules per meter). But, jeeze, at least get your units right before you start doing dimensional analysis.