We must start preparations to build our own synchrotron light source
By: Tony Joel
I am worried. We are going to miss the boat. We are going to be left behind.
I read a report recently that Taiwan is now commissioning its second synchrotron light source. They call it the Taiwan Photon Source, or TPS. This will take the form of a horizontally laid, closed-ring, hollow metal tube some 518 m in circumference. It looks a bit like a giant hula-hoop lying on the ground. (Does anyone remember those?) The tube contains nothing. To be more precise, it contains a vacuum. Down the middle of the tube, along its axis, a train of many, many packets of electrons race around the ring, chasing one another at almost the speed of light. As they go around the ring, they project a powerful sweeping beam of light forward and outward at a tangent to the ring.
This light, called synchrotron radiation, turns out to be really useful. For a start, it is extremely bright. Secondly, it is spread very broadly and smoothly in wavelength. At its longest wavelength, it reaches into the infrared, while at its shortest it extends into the X-ray region. Scientists, those clever fellows in white coats, or, nowadays, in T-shirts and jeans, using special optical filters, can select out the particular narrow range of wavelengths that they need and, using that selected band, perform very interesting and very useful measurements on all sorts of materials.
So, for example, they can measure the positions and spacings of the atoms in a giant protein molecule, or of those in a virus. That is, they can determine the structure of the protein molecule or the virus. They can then observe the changes brought about in the structure when a pharmaceutical molecule attaches itself to the protein molecule or the virus. From this, they can deduce how the behaviour of the protein molecule or the virus is changed by the presence of the pharmaceutical molecule, and so develop a medicine. And they can do this in record time.
The light, suitably tailored in wavelength, can be used to find out how a catalyst performs its chemical magic at the atomic scale, or how a ‘high-temperature’ superconducting compound can be made to carry electricity with no resistance near room temperature. It can be used to study how some materials can make powerful magnets, and why. It can be used to fabricate materials at the nanoscale. You name it, and synchrotron light can do it. Okay, I might be overstating the matter a bit, but synchrotron light is pretty powerful and pretty useful. After all, there are somewhere near 70 facilities around the world that produce it. Have a look at www.lightsources.org, and you will see what I mean.
We should build one. And soon.
It will most probably appear very ‘partisan’ and I will surely bring down upon my head loud hoots of derision from some quarters, but a synchrotron light source is, in my humble opinion, a far, far more useful scientific facility for South Africa, and even for Africa, than a giant array of radio telescopes. I am referring, of course, to the much-vaunted Square Kilometre Array (SKA). The SKA is certainly a magnificent project. No doubt. A lot of people will get work both during construction, and – perhaps fewer – during operation. But how is knowledge of a distant quasar going to help us find a cure for Aids, for Ebola, or for cancer?
I say let the Americans and the Europeans and others, those with plenty of disposable wealth, spend their money on finding Man’s place in the Universe. We, here in South Africa, should be using our much more meagre resources to find answers to pressing, even terrible, problems closer to home. All the great benefits accompanying the construction and operation of the SKA can be obtained in designing, building and operating a synchrotron light source, with the added advantage that the results flowing from its use will be of actual, direct, material benefit to us. The money we, that is, our government, is spending on the SKA could be better used. I urge the Department of Science and Technology to commission a feasibility study into the establishment of a synchrotron light source, post-haste. Before we miss the boat.
Joel is a University of the Witwatersrand electrical engineering alumnus recently retired after a career in electrical and electronic engineering and physics spanning some 43 years at the South African Nuclear Energy Corporation - ajoel9999@gmail.com
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