Question: How do you speed up particles?

James Holloway answered on 22 Mar 2013:

At the moment people use an empty metal pipe and electric fields to accelerate particles.

What we do is heat up a gas until it becomes a plasma, and then hit it really hard with a short laser beam. The laser beam makes the electrons in the plasma move is a precise way, they create a kind of wave. We then accelerate our particles by getting them to ride this wave. Its quite tricky!