A night at the beamline
Eminem, Game of thrones and the ever-present threat of diamonds crushing
For 24 hours a day, six days a week, electrons circulate within the Advanced Light Source storage ring in Berkeley, US. These rip along at 99.999995% the speed of light, directed and perturbed by magnetic arrays, their radial deceleration producing valuable photons of incredible brightness. At 40 experimental endstations around the ring, called beamlines, this light is gathered, monochromated and shaped to illuminate samples for spectroscopy, microscopy, tomography and –my favourite – diffraction.