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LEP, the World’s Biggest Accelerator, is on the Air

OCT 01, 1989

LEP, by far the largest scientific instrument ever built, has begun doing physics. This 27‐km‐circumference electron‐positron collider ring, bestriding the French‐Swiss frontier at CERN, delivered up its first Z0 particle shortly before midnight on 13 August—a scant 8 minutes after its countercirculating beams of 45.5‐GeV positrons and electrons were first brought into collison. Thus the world’s second “Z0 factory” was in business just 30 days after it was handed over by its builders on Bastille Day.

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This Content Appeared In
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Volume 42, Number 10

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