The consequence of its Daliesque geometry is that every particle inside the machine experiences the same forces as it travels around.

ECONOMIST: Fusion power

As you're swiping your boarding pass ( or smartphone), the machine also scans it for particle-sized traces of explosive materials and sends the all-clear or no-go in less than two seconds.

ENGADGET: Hitachi boarding gate can sniff explosives on passes, keep the transport queues flowing (video)

The old linear accelerator at Stanford was repurposed, turning it from the machine that co-discovered a particle known as the charm quark (thus winning its operators a Nobel prize) into a factory for making particles called B mesons.

ECONOMIST: The arrow of time