Steady to a fault

How do accelerators survive in some of the most earthquake-prone regions on Earth? Perhaps you’ve seen the trailer for San Andreas, a movie in which a massive quake rocks northern California, toppling skyscrapers and propelling a massive tsunami toward the Golden Gate Bridge. Just a kilometer west of the San Andreas Fault sits SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, home to a painstakingly calibrated particle accelerator. Which may elicit the question: Why build there? Isn’t a tectonic warzone...