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'Boomerang' The Australian Synchrotron


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The Australian Synchrotron, nicknamed Boomerang 20 has been in construction for the last ~3 years and was officially opened July 31st 2007.

 

 

 

For anyone that doesnt know what a synchrotron is look here and heres the site for Boomerang 20

 

It may not be large or powerful, but it is the most advanced piece of scientific instrument in Australia and lucky for me the site is just across the road from my university :hihi:

 

The synchrotron has the capacity to have 30 beamlines that can each run different experiments such as X-ray diffraction or Lithography.

 

The Australian Synchrotron is a powerful light source that will provide the scientific community with a diverse tool for scientific and industrial research. This new world class national facility has leading edge research laboratories based around specific beamlines. The uses of these beamlines include: protein structure determination, material science and nanotechnology, biological cell function and complex surface analysis.

 

Anyway, the main inspiration for this thread was that just last week I got to go on a tour of the Australian Synchrotron :hihi: it was pretty cool, here are some pics:

 

This one is inside the facility looking at where a beamline can exit the storage ring, as you can see it doesnt have any instruments hooked up yet.

 

This is where it all begins, the LINAC

 

..other end of the LINAC. By the time the electrons get down to the end of the 20 LINAC they are already going at .5c :hihi:

A little bit of trivia, each of those copper rings had to be grown from scratch to avoid having any impurities, then it took 4 months to assemble just this section, as it must be to an accuracy of 1micrometer, otherwise it wont work!

 

This pic shows the storage ring, quite an unremarkable ring of metal really to look at, apart from all the funky stuff hanging off it. Those big yellow things are the bending magnets that make the electrons travel in a circular path.

 

I put this one in as a testament to Aussie ingenuity :hihi: apparently theres a solenoid in there that has off as its default position, and it was needed to be on, so why not just shove some pliers in there and tape it? yeah she'll be right :hihi:

 

Some stats:

-It uses 5MW, thats not much really..

-Energy: 3GeV

-Circumference: 216 m

-Revolution Frequency: 1.3879 MHz

 

J

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VERY COOL Jay!

I love it when big, expensive, high-tech science machines pop up.

Do you know if they have any big project planned yet??

 

I know that I have a synchrotron about 10 miles away from my house at the NIST headquarters.

NIST: Synchrotron UV Radiation Facility SURF III - Home page

 

Here's a description that I found:

The NIST Synchrotron Ultraviolet Radiation Facility (SURF III) serves as the Nation's primary standard for absolute source-based optical radiometry from the visible through the extreme-ultraviolet (EUV) spectral regions. It supports a variety of scientific and measurement missions, primarily in the EUV.

Sure. I'll take their word for it. Not enough time to try to translate that right now. :hihi:

 

I like the pliers by the way.

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I used the powder diffraction beamline last week for an experiment on Rubidium oxide crystal structure :eek: The theory behind it is nice but the result taking is a little dry.. its just cool to be pushing buttons on a multimillion dollar machine instead of the crappy old equipment we have at uni.

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