The Blog

   It's pronounced *nu-cle-ar*...

Okay, the Access Grid was cool, but sticking my head in a particle accelerator was cooler. Hooray for the thing being down for repairs, which meant we got to look inside and get a better idea of how it works.

It was also good to visit the research school where my uncle Jimmy (James Boland) worked for so many years. I got a nice sense of family history, even though I saw no real evidence that he was ever there.

We went on a private tour of the physics school, given by an old friend of Wendy's supervisor. We caught the lift up to the top of the particle accelerator, which is huge. At the top, a large supply of negative ions are created using a voltage of about a million Volts. These ions are whisked past a huge magnet and sent into the accelerator, where a giant Van der Graaff generator creates a voltage of around 16 million Volts in a positive terminal awaits them halfway down. They hit the terminal and are converted to positive ions and then accelerated faster down to the bottom where the ions are directed into a number of different experiments, or can be have their energy doubled by passing through a superconducting linear post-accelerator.

What all this means is that you get charged atoms travelling at up to 10% of the speed of light, at which point they have enough energy to overcome the electrostatic repulsion between atomic nuclei and nuclear reactions can occur. That is, the positive bits at the center of atoms can smoosh together and go bang. This process is called fusion and it's what happens within the sun to make it glow so bright.

We also got to visit their plasma laboratory, where they study what happens in high energy ionised gases, like in the sun's corona. This stuff was almost applicable to me, as I have done a little bit of stuff with the theory of plasma before. However, what I liked most about it was the wierd helix structure the plasma moved in.

We got a lift back because a thunderstorm had hit while we were inside and it was raining way too heavily for us to walk for twenty minutes. Now we're stuck here for an afternoon lecture that had been delayed past lunch by the Access Grid event running overtime. We were meant to be doing a prac class this afternoon. Grr... Arg...

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