Particle accelerator on a chip

[Curious layman 121]

Quote

for the first time, scientists at Stanford and SLAC have created a silicon chip that can accelerate electrons—albeit at a fraction of the velocity of that massive instrument—using an infrared laser to deliver, in less than a hair's width, the sort of energy boost that takes microwaves many feet.

https://phys.org/news/2020-01-particle-chip.html

This image, magnified 25,000 times, shows a section of a prototype accelerator-on-a-chip. The segment shown here are one-tenth the width of a human hair. The oddly shaped gray structures are nanometer-sized features carved in to silicon that focus bursts of infrared laser light, shown in yellow and purple, on a flow of electrons through the center channel. As the electrons travel from left to right, the light focused in the channel is carefully synchronized with passing particles to move them forward at greater and greater velocities. By packing 1,000 of these acceleration channels onto an inch-sized chip, Stanford researchers hope to create an electron beam that moves at 94 percent of the speed of light, and to use this energized particle flow for research and medical applications. Credit: Neil Sapra

[MigL 1477]

One thousand would be a single chip  about the width of 20 human hairs.
( there are 5 in the 1/10 photo above )

An even bigger breakthrough would be a way to sequence the chips so as to have an array miles long.
You could put the LHC out of business.
( kidding, the article doesn't mention power draw per 'cell'  )