THE FIRST OBSERVATION OF LASER WAKEFIELD ACCELERATION OF INJECTED ELECTRONS has been announced by a team of French scientists. Their research is part of an effort to develop a more compact method for accelerating particles to high energies using the strong electric fields in laser light. In the wakefield approach a short laser pulse is sent through a plasma, exciting waves of positive-charge and negative-charge regions. An injected particle starting with just the right velocity can ride these plasma waves (which spread out like the wake behind a boat) to ever higher speeds. In the French experiment, maximum longitudinal electric fields of 1.5 GV/m were achieved. The electron energy gain was as high as 1.6 MeV. (F. Amiranoff et al., Physical Review Letters, 3 August 1998; background article in Scientific American, March 1989.)