Public tours are scheduled for Yale University's atom smasher, which is about to close.The New Haven Register reports the Van de Graaf particle accelerator is being removed and will be replaced by labs and classrooms. Tours of the accelerator are scheduled for Saturday.
Physicist Karsten Heeger, director of the lab, says workers will start taking the atom smasher apart by the end of the year.
The underground accelerator is about 100 feet long and takes up 10,000 square feet.
It was installed in 1987 and was the highest-energy tandem accelerator in the world, generating high-velocity streams of nuclei that could be directed into nearby labs for experiments. More recently, accelerator operations began winding down as more powerful accelerators were built and research interests shifted.
The accelerator was shut down in 2011.
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