Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Giant Synchrotron to be Constructed in UK

Posted by michael on from the time-to-make-the-doughnut dept.

juntunen writes "According to the BBC, construction will start this week on Diamond: a £500 million synchrotron in Oxfordshire at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory. These facilities are crucial to a deep understanding of structure in matter. With all the new emphasis on biotechnology, demand will certainly be high. Diamond has its own homepage, and the Accelerator Physics Group has publicly available tech notes."

2 of 20 comments (clear)

  1. Couple of questions... by SolemnDragon · · Score: 2, Interesting
    1. the lifespan of the facility is expected to be "about twenty years." I'm curious as to whether this is expected to be a result of technological obsolescence, or the depreciation factors which affect a unique type of facility such as this?

    2. The French promised to help fund it. And then pulled out of it. When? This article is lacking in a little depth and background, here... does anyone know more about this?

    3. 'understanding the proteins of genes' (paraphrase)??? let me get this straight... you're going to batter a gene with electrons, and see if the X-Men really were just a comic book concept? Or are we going to try to understand basic matter, which should take, oh, say, 19 years 364 days and twelve hours, and then *hurrah* just before the building collapses, we suddenly understand the complete human genome!!! Too bad our proof is buried under the rubble... This article ties together every modern theme, in a facility shaped remarkably like a hubcab...

    --
    "I'd say 'Have a good time,' but arson is still illegal.
  2. Re:oh that's great... by Dastardly · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I just wish we had gotten that huge particle accelerator and congress hadn't overturned it, oh for the chance to produce new and undiscovered particles...

    The SSC is crap. The (Large Hadron Collider) LHC being built at CERN reaches higher energies at a fraction of the cost of the SSC. I think RHIC at Brookhaven gets pretty close to SSC energies. Although, applying the technology being used for LHC to a tunnel the size of the one SSC was supposed to use would reach even higher energies.

    That suggests an idea. Maybe the tunnel and detector caverns should be approved and built first, then decide what to put in them later.

    Dastardly