APPLICATIONS
 
Today's "atom smashers" are mostly used in experimental particle physics, where particles are smashed together at high speeds to break them apart and study their insides and try to find "fundamental particles" of nature which cannot be broken up. Many elementary particles such as muons, bosons, and quarks have been discovered, as well as antiparticles. Also, as particles are collided, very extreme conditions are produced(high energy, high temperature) which help scientists studying the behavior of the universe at its beginning.
 
In addition, because all accelerating particles produce electromagnetic radiation, particle accelerators can be used specifically for producing electromagnetic radiation. For example, x-ray generators use particle accelerators to produce x-rays. Also, the synchrotron radiation from a circular accelerator is very bright and intense(more so than normal x-rays), very collimated, and it has a wide energy spectrum so that different energy beams can be produced - these characteristics are making x-rays better and more powerful.
The smaller particles produced by atom smashers are also used in ultra-precision microscopy. The smaller particles have smaller de Broglie wavelength radiation which is able to resolve better so smaller details can be seen. The de Broglie wavelength is inversely proportional to the momentum of the particle, so the smaller size of the particles compared to an electron allows better resolution.
Particle accelerators have also been used in radiocarbon dating to reduce the amount of sample size required to get an accurate result - accelerator mass spectroscopy.
 
Low energy linear accelerators can also be found in TVs(cathode ray tube) and normal x-ray generators.