Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory have reached a new milestone with their development of the world’s highest voltage electron gun.

This advancement is crucial to the Electron-Ion Collider (EIC), a groundbreaking project designed to explore the inner structures of atomic nuclei. Over a rigorous six-month test, the electron gun achieved unprecedented results, propelling electrons from zero to 500 million miles per hour in just two inches.

The EIC, housed at Brookhaven, is a 2.4-mile circumference circular collider aimed at producing high-speed collisions between electrons and ions. The goal of these collisions is to disintegrate protons and neutrons, unveiling insights into gluons, the particles that bind quarks within atomic nuclei.

Gluons exert the strongest known force in nature, yet their properties remain elusive.

Brookhaven physicist Erdong Wang, the primary developer since 2017, stated, “We speed up the velocity of electrons to 80% the speed of light. That’s an acceleration from zero to over 500 million miles per hour in about two ten-billionths of a second.”

This rapid acceleration over a short distance is essential for achieving the collision speeds needed for such intricate experiments.

The successful testing of the electron gun signals a major step forward in achieving the EIC’s ambitious mission of unraveling the mysteries of atomic matter.

Understanding the forces at play within protons and neutrons could transform fundamental physics and deepen our knowledge of the universe’s most basic elements.