PALO ALTO, CALIFORNIA—Last month, the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory (SLAC stands for Stanford Linear Accelerator Center) reached its golden anniversary. After 50 years of operation the organization has built up quite a résumé. For instance, it claims six different Nobel prize-winning scientists for research that discovered two different fundamental particles. And today the facility keeps on churning out science: 1,000-plus papers come out of SLAC each year from the roughly 3,400 scientific professionals from across the world that utilize the facility.

Despite all the incredible work that has taken place within its walls, SLAC has rarely been open for media members to see (understandable, since a particle accelerator could get a tad dangerous). But on its most recent milestone, SLAC shut the power down for an afternoon in order to invite Ars and others in for a look (some Stanford staff members eagerly joined for their first glimpse, too). I'm not an expert in particle physics by any means, but I jumped at the chance to partake in this rare treat. Below are some images of the crazy things found within these intensely private walls.

The tour started in the linear accelerator facility but above the actual accelerator.

Tour guide Mark Hogan, who doubles as an accelerator physicist at Stanford, was quick with some context for us. How powerful are these microwaves? They'll get you a baked potato in about one millisecond.

At 3,073.72 meters, it's not just one of the longest accelerators, but also one of the world's longest buildings period. All that power combined with all this length generates an awful lot of electricity. Hogan estimated several million volts per meter to power everything. The tour hosting group agreed the monthly power bill reached $1 million 15 years ago, but couldn't decide upon an estimate for today (energy use has gone down, but energy costs have risen). A nonscientific anecdote for the length of this thing: SLAC Media Manager Andy Freeberg told me they even hold an annual fun run alongside the structure (the longtime champion recently moved on; the crown is officially up for grabs).

The larger piping (below) is a laser calibration system that ensures the beam stays straight. The beam itself is in the smaller piping (above—close-up here). The beam gets wrapped in a unique metal—called High Nickel Content Shielding—to protect the Earth's magnetic field from interfering.

It happens to be an active area of research right now. This beam is really moving (an electron travels at 669,600,000 miles per hour, or 99.9999999 percent of the speed of light). To achieve this, there's plenty of hardware in the facility around the beam itself. There's a device containing plasma and molten lithium that doubles the acceleration of the particles (pictured here with Hogan). And there's this device, which uses magnetic power for the accelerator rather than against it, hoping to further focus the electrons.

The Linac Coherent Light Source is an X-ray producing, free electron laser that sheds enough light to see things on almost an atomic level (before ultimately destroying samples, of course). SLAC has been observing photosynthesis in the act with this kind of hardware.

The setup cost the university half a billion dollars to build. It's a partial reconstruction of the last third of the original linear accelerator, but it uses a separate "injector." So this last third functions completely independently from the other two-thirds. It happens to be the most powerful device of its kind in the world. Pictured above is one of the magnets that prevents the electron beam from becoming too wide.

The beam eventually makes it to this hall, where all the undulators reside—appropriately named the Undulator Hall. Each section contains 100 magnetic poles, three centimeters each, that wiggle the beam in order to produce the X-ray beam. In total there are 33 of these in operation, keeping things crucially aligned. In unison, these produce 10 billion times more light than just one undulator could alone. (Vertical shot of the room here; tour co-guide John Bozek pictured in each. He also happens to be an atomic, molecular, and optical instrument scientist).

The SLAC team accepts proposals for projects to utilize the space in addition to their own work (real scientists at work here in the room nearby). It's in high demand given the highest concentration of X-rays in the world is at your fingertips. The rays are also among the shortest—femtoseconds in length, according to Bozek—because when dealing with these particles "that's the time scale of nature." (Wider shot of the room here; one other section close-up here).

Bonus: Without much context, a gallery of some warning signs from the SLAC tour.

Listing image by Nathan Mattise