Stanford Linear Accelerator: Meaning (information, definition, explanation, facts)

The Stanford Linear Accelerator Center is a U.S. National Laboratory operated by Stanford University for the U.S. Department of Energy.

Founded in 1962, it is located on Sand Hill Road in Menlo Park, California. The accelerator is 3 kilometers in length and passes under Interstate 280. It serves over 3,000 visiting researchers yearly. SLAC operates particle accelerators for high-energy physics and synchrotron light radiation research.

Research at SLAC has produced three Nobel Prizes in Physics:

• 1976 - The Charm Quark
• 1990 - Quark structure inside Protons and Neutrons
• 1995 - The Tauon or Tau Lepton

SLAC's meeting facilities provided a venue for the homebrew computer club and other pioneers of the 1980s home computer revolution, and later SLAC hosted the first webpage in the U.S.