TIL that Helium (He) is the only element on the periodic table that was not discovered on Earth. It was found when analyzing the sun’s spectrum, hence its name which comes from the Greek god of the sun Helios.

No worries:

You're actually asking great and amazing questions with your comment above!

But yes, cyclotrons and colliders, have been smashing together a basic range of a subatomic particles from the beginning, for several decades now.

Those collision instances usually include protons and/or electrons at various levels and states of energy.

So ya, these devices do not accelerate just electrons, but also give insane boosts of accelerations in protons...

Resulting in a big spray of after-effect particles.


Just to go off on a bit of a tangent here...

One quick example of a proton beam, rather than electron beam, that pops into my mind (pun not intended!) was the case of the Russian scientist Anatoli Petrovich Bugorski back in 1978...

When he was innocently minding his business, and making reparis...

When he stuck his head into a particle accelerator to better make those repairs...

And that was when the poor dude's brain was literally BLASTED and FLASHED with a high energy proton beam, at about 76 giga-electron volts within the particle accelerator!

(Which is just insane!).

He reported seeing bright white flash when his brain and head directly connected/contacted with the accelerated proton beam.

/r/todayilearned Thread Parent Link - education.jlab.org