bevatron

BeV +‎ -a- +‎ -tron

bevatron (plural bevatrons)

1. A particle accelerator of the 1950s, capable of imparting energies of billions of electron volts.
   • 1948 January, “Can huge new atom guns shoot out biggest secrets?”, in Popular Science, volume 152, number 1:

     Dr. Ernest O. Lawrence, the inventor of the cyclotron, revealed the plans for one of these machines recently at the Sheffield centennial at Yale. It will be called a bevatron.

   • 1987, Armin Hermann, Lanfranco Belloni, John Krige, History of CERN: Launching the European Organization for Nuclear Research:

     By pursuing this option her physicists had the best of both worlds: they could have access to a bevatron without disrupting their domestic programme.

   • 1990, Philip J. Regal, The anatomy of judgment:

     In his science fiction novel, Eye in the Sky, a group of visitors fall through a proton beam when an observation platform breaks at a bevatron facility.

• → Polish: bewatron

Borrowed from French bévatron.

bevatron n (plural bevatroane)

1. (physics) bevatron