Feature

Research at ISIS

By 2011-11-01T00:00:00

Aerial photograph of the ISIS research facility, showing Diamond Light Source in the background

Source: STFC

ISIS acts as a super-sensitive microscope. Researchers working at the cutting edge of science use neutrons to find out where atoms are inside materials and what they are doing

The ISIS pulsed neutron and muon source is one of the principal research centres operated by the STFC (Science and Technology Facilities Council) at the RAL (Rutherford Appleton Laboratory).1 Every year 2000 scientists from 30 countries descend on this corner of the Oxfordshire countryside to perform hundreds of experiments on ISIS across all the sciences, including physics, chemistry, materials engineering, earth sciences, biology and archaeology, though some of the most fruitful work blurs the boundaries between the disciplines. 

With the scientific community's apparent obsession with acronyms, it might surprise some that ISIS, is named after Isis, the Ancient Egyptian goddess, who could resurrect the dead. ISIS is aptly named as equipment from Nimrod and Nina, previous accelerators at the site, were cannibalised for its construction. Isis was also the matron of nature and magic. Given that some of the ground-breaking science undertaken at ISIS would not look out of place in a science fiction thriller, we will find out how ISIS works and demystify some of the research that takes place here.

Opened in 1985, pioneering work has included discovering the structure of high-temperature superconductors, and the solid phase of buckminsterfullerene (buckyballs).

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