10 billion x brighter than the Sun!
Sychrotrontastic Round Up. Part 5 of the Nuclear Physics Series
We have looked at quantum mechanics, general relativity, holographic theory, CERN’s working parts and its location, and some of the global network of Light Sources and Synchrotrons. There are a few elements missing. Who sponsors and governs them and who are their customers? What kind of resources do they use? We take a look at the UK’s Diamond Light Source to answer some of these questions. We also take a look at how magnets help create light beams, high energy fusion plasma containers and the geomagnetic field of the earth. Finally, is the positioning of the global synchrotron network random or is there a purpose?
What is a Light Source?
Synchrotrons create synchrotron radiation as a bi-product of the particle scattering experiments used to observe the behaviour and structure of collided particles. This radiation is of broad spectrum and accounts for much of the energy lost. Light Sources, however, make use of a technology called a free electron laser or FEL. The pulsed laser is produced using the relativistic dynamics between electrons through a series of magnets called a wiggler to speed up bunches of electrons. These electrons emit synchrotron radiation as well (as the synchrotrons do) but this then interacts again with the electrons, creating an organised emission of radiation that can be tuned and targeted. The speed at which the electrons are pulsed through the synchrotron creates ultra bright x-ray, infrared and ultraviolet light. These light sources can then be used like a super microscope to analyse organic and non organic materials down to the particle level studied in quantum mechanics. Let’s take a look at the UK’s Light Source.
Diamond Light Source
In early 2022, Culham Centre for Fusion Energy, announced they had successfully created 59 megajoules of energy in 5 seconds from The Joint European Torus (JET) fusion reactor. This is the equivalent of 11 megawatts of power, which would be enough to power around 8756 homes for a whole year.
Across the now demolished cooling towers and the collapsed Didcot A power station, barely 7 miles south from the JET laboratories (sited on an old war time Royal Navy Air Station), sits the futuristic, toroidal, Diamond Light Source. This third generation synchrotron was approved in 2002 and began operating in 2007. The Harwell Campus is also sited on an old military war time facility, this time an RAF base. To date Diamond operates 33 beamlines. Off of these beamlines sit a number of laboratories, each conducting different types of experiments. Many of these will be commercially led teams of scientists, others will be for research purposes from Universities, possibly commissioned by public or private bodies. The facility is essentially a super physics and biotechnology laboratory.
In the proposal presentation for the Diamond Light Source, the facility was identified as a ‘power converter’, using approximately 15 megawatts of power, but only producing 300-500 kW of X-rays, most of which is lost in heat. A power converter changes power from one form eg AC to DC, or voltage or frequency. The value of this for this Light Source is unclear. Are they reusing the power they convert through the accelerator in other facilities?
A few years ago Riello UPS arranged an Uninterrupted Power Supply solution for Diamond, due to previous issues in broken electricity supply. When supply was interrupted calibration for whichever beamlines were being worked on, would need to start again from the beginning, taking up to two weeks per beamline. UPS systems are effectively high powered batteries for essential machinery in the event of grid supply going off line. Each system depends on requirements and estimated time down. Did Riello have a solution that provided backup for the length of time required to complete a beamline calibration and run additional computers and machinery?
Radioactive waste removal from Magnox on the Harwell Campus was started in 2017 using specially designed Novapak B containers. Magnox is a particular type of nuclear reactor, only eight of which remain in the UK under British Energy. Magnox Ltd is a nuclear site decommissioning company which comes under the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority. They have decommissioned 10 power stations and 2 research facilities, one of which was at Harwell. Diamond Light Source has hosted researchers from Manchester University looking at the potential for ‘locking up’ radioactive waste for safer future storage, and a host of other research projects on how to deal with radioactive waste. At the same time scientists using the facility have been researching ways in which hydrogen could be used for a new power source.
The facility is largely funded by the Science and Technology Facilities Council (86%), a body formed in April 2007 from a group of separate physics and science oversight committees, and 14% of its funding comes from the Wellcome Trust.
The Science and Technology Facilities Council provides access to a long list of science facilities including the Boulby Underground Laboratory, which sits 1.1km deep within ICL Boulby’s polysulphate mine on the coast, just south of Redcar. The mine allows for projects requiring minimal radiation. The Rutherford Appleton Laboratory was established post war at the Harwell base, where Diamond Light Source is also situated. The Council can gain access to and provide funding for projects at many European and international facilities including CERN, other particle physics laboratories and observatories. European organisations in turn gain access to a similarly broad spectrum of international facilities, who have their own sources of funds and commercial and scientific advisory boards.
The Harwell facility has a long and venerable list of members on their Industrial Science Committee, given that much of the research is carried out for industrial purposes. Included in the current committee are members from GlaxoSmithKline, Evotech, Rolls Royce, Vertex Pharmaceuticals, Johnson Matthey (Chemicals and Technology), Infinium (low carbon fuel for trucks), Astra Zeneca and Astex Pharmaceuticals with a range of shareholder to stakeholder representatives. More information can be found on the financial structure of the facility here.
You’re Magnetic!
Diamond Light Source has run around 60 different experiments in conjunction with government bodies and pharmaceutical companies related to Covid-19. Public Health England is sited on the same campus. Diamond has enabled research teams in analysing Covid 19 at a molecular level, studying the cell infection process and replication from various angles, and studying a number of chemical compounds in the hunt for targeted therapeutics. The facilities have also been used to analyse the clotting issues covered in the press last year.
During the summer of 2021 in the UK many people found their sternum, collar bone and should areas had become magnetic. This phenomenon was across the board, from those who took Covid treatments to those who did not. We suspected some sort of magnetised metal nanoparticulates had been released into the air around the end of April-June. This possibly occurred also prior to Covid but to a lesser degree.
A research group at Diamond Light carried out work in 2021 on how (and the characteristics of) metallic nanoparticles were able to cross the blood brain barrier, after the discovery of magnetite in brain tissue samples. ‘Single-particle inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (spICP-MS)… synchrotron X-ray absorption fine structure spectroscopy (XAFS), and high spatial resolution scanning transmission X-ray microscopy (STXM)’ techniques were used to allow deep analysis of cellular structures and content. Various sizes and shapes of particulate were studied as well as different elements, and the effects they had on brain tissue.
There are, as we all now know, few coincidences.
Talking of Magnets
All light sources and synchrotrons use magnets with alternating currents (switching from positive to negative and back again) to drive their storage rings, lasers and colliders. BLADE the superconducting magnet at Diamond is 300,000 times stronger than the earth’s magnetic field. When you look at a magnet and the fields of energy it emits, you see a toroidal (or doughnut) shape. Remember experiments at school with iron filings?
At the Culham Energy Fusion experiment the centre of the experiment is also a toroidal shaped solenoid (wire coiled magnet) called a Tokamak. The device contains the plasma created by super heating deuterium and tritium isotopes. Within that plasma, nuclear fusion occurs, which creates energy. Here is an example of the magnet structure contained in one and attached a video of how this device works.
The earth’s magnetic field, formed from the emission of electromagnetic waves, also makes a toroidal shaped field, looking quite similar to one that would be produced by the Tokamak. Wires are not wrapped around the earth to create this field of course. The earth’s energy field is formed naturally from the magnetic elements underneath its surface and in its core. The vast amount of highly metallic rock - eg iron and magnetite - showing as magnetic anomalies seen on this map, play a role in activating this field.
The north pole is largely understood to be a negative charge, and the south largely positive. It appears there are far more anomalies to the north than south, which creates a similar toroidal shaped magnetic field as we see in the Tokamak, except it does not penetrate through the poles of the earth. Instead it appears the pole charges are being drawn towards each other in a continuous loop.
If we consider the Schumann Resonance, that it reflects the charge in the atmosphere, we might conclude that it is this magnetic field which allows our atmosphere to form and order itself. Indeed fairly recent research has concluded that it is the magnetic field that prevents solar winds from stripping earth of it’s atmosphere.
Strategic placement?
What has this got to do with Light Source facilities? These research centres seem to lie in areas of high magnetic anomalies, except for mainland Western Europe. This area is oddly devoid of them, apart from a line extending to the Paris area, and along the coast at Dunkirk in to Belgium. The highly unremarkable mainland Western Europe is separated from vast magnetic anomalies in the East, Scandinavia, Russia and parts of Asia by the Trans European Suture Zone. North America and Canada are also rich in magnetic anomalies, thinning out a little towards New Mexico.
Let’s look at the facility arrangement around the earth. There are clusters of facilities across Europe, Japan and the USA. It is interesting that the large majority are in the northern hemisphere with only single facilities in India, Brazil, Thailand, Singapore, Taiwan and Australia outside of that zone. The northern hemisphere being the area with most anomalies and a stronger negative charge.
It seems that some clusters, particularly in the middle and far east and western US are situated on major fault lines, with others in green and yellow areas, indicating some level of seismic hazard. Very few of these facilities are sited outside of seismic hazard areas.
Facilities on the West coast of the US (SLAC and ALS - both affiliated with/part of the Department of Energy, Office of Science ), Trieste, Italy (Elettra), Ankara, Turkey (TARLA), Japan (Photon Factory or KEK, IRFEL, UVSOR and others), the Iranian Light Source and Yerevan, Armenia (CANDLE) in particular sit on areas of high seismic potential.
It seems odd that so many facilities are clustered in the northern hemisphere. To what purpose? With so many high precision facilities on fault lines and magnetic anomalies, it seems almost deliberate. Diamond itself sits on the edge of a large magnetic anomaly that lies to the west of London.
It feels as if there may be some other more intrinsic connection between the Light Sources and the earth. Is one dependent on the other? It is possible that there is a benefit to siting these facilities in areas of geological energy, whether fault based or magnetic, a functional benefit. It is also possible that these sites might be monitoring the stability of the geomagnetic field. If the theory that our geomagnetic field stabilises our atmosphere is correct, then it is feasible, given the interference in the atmosphere by bad players, that Light Sources might be contributing to a balancing effect in the geomagnetic field. Quite how we are not sure.
What we do know is that Light Sources create light 10 billion times brighter than the sun, in high powered, targeted lasers… all that energy!
More to come on magnetism, lightning, energy and the next part of the Covid/Rad series on behavioural effects.
Thank you to Clare, Loretta, Elayne and Nicky, who have all bounced ideas around so that this article could be written.
The possibility of the locations of these facilities as potential balancing countermeasures of the natural that maybe is being purposefully accelerated magnetic pole shift seems right to me. But how would this be done is hard to answer indeed.