A Majestic opening
7:49am Friday 19th October 2007
THE Queen may well think she has been the victim of a diary mix-up today when one of the most remarkable buildings to have been erected during her reign comes into view.
For from a distance the Diamond Light Source might easily be taken for the new Wembley Stadium or the newly-completed glory of Britain's Olympic Games.
The building that will greet her in south Oxfordshire required 2,100 tons of steel to build while its roof area is large enough for Concorde to manoeuvre inside.
This £260m doughnut-shaped structure which stands at Chilton might look like a futuristic sports stadium but its purpose is altogether more serious than staging the FA Cup or even the Olympic men's 100m final.
For Diamond is the biggest science facility seen in the UK for three decades, representing the country's biggest investment in science for more than 40 years.
Its importance is reflected in the fact that The Queen, who will officially open the new science facility this morning, is scheduled to spend four hours looking around, accompanied by The Duke of Edinburgh.
The party will embark on a lengthy tour of what is a remarkable feat of science and engineering that measures over half a kilometre in circumference to cover an area over three times the footprint of Buckingham Palace.
While the Diamond Light Source looks brilliant, its brilliance goes far beyond what most non-scientific minds might comprehend.
For Diamond is essentially a massive machine able to generate highly-focused infrared, ultra violet and X-ray beams of exceptional quality and brightness - light sources that are said to be ten billion times brighter than the Sun.
Such is the intensity of the beams that it allows scientists and engineers to delve deep into the basic structure of matter and materials, offering the rich prospect of scientific breakthroughs across a mind-boggling variety of scientific fields.
These range from the development of drugs to combat killer diseases to advancing data storage techniques, and from the preservation of historical artefacts to studying aircraft components.
The chemical composition of meteorites, the mysteries of the Solar System, the best conditions for chocolate-making . . . the list goes on.
It almost seems that there is hardly an area of scientific research that would not benefit from the Diamond.
The Queen and Duke will no doubt be briefed on one planned project with vivid royal connections.
The 21st-century technology is to help conserve the fabric of the legendary Tudor warship, the Mary Rose, which was built over 450 years ago in the reign of Henry VIII.
While it takes only two minutes in the company of the chief executive Prof Gerd Materlik to recognise the importance of this place to the nation's wealth, understanding what actually goes on here can take a little longer.
"Think of it as a super microscope," I was advised early on my tour of Diamond by my guide Silvana Damerell.
"In fact, a series of super microscopes, all housed in a doughnut-shaped building ."
Prof Materlik, recognising a non-physicist when he saw one, took a slightly different tack.
"It's really a big lightbulb," he began slowly, "only it is not just optical light but X-ray or infrared beams. It allows us to see more in the world. And see better.
"This uniquely bright light can reveal, treat and transform a vast range of materials."
Essentially, I was being gently introduced to the world of synchrotron light, a world that Prof Materlik has inhabited for more than 30 years.
"Scientists always say that once you get the synchrotron bug, you never get rid of it," he cheerfully said.
Electrons are used to generate synchrotron light in the form of X-rays, ultraviolent and infrared beams.
In his native Germany Prof Materlik has seen it develop into an indispensable research tool.
Without synchrotrons the anti-flu drug Relenza could not have been developed, nor could the foot-and-mouth virus have been mapped, which directly led to a vaccine.
The UK built the world's first dedicated synchrotron light machine back in 1981 at Daresbury in Cheshire.
At the heart of any synchrotron is a giant storage ring, a doughnut-shaped vacuum chamber through which electrons hurtle at nearly the speed of light.
As these electrons circle through specially designed magnets positioned around the ring, they lose energy, which emerges as beams of extremely bright light of different wavelengths.
"It is this light that enables scientists to see things in the structure of materials, at the atomic and molecular level, previously unimaginable.
Diamond is a third-generation facility, explained Prof Materlik, which puts Oxford and the UK well ahead of the game.
For at Chilton, we are talking about an electron beam energy of three giga electron volts, that's 3,000,000,000 volts. The electrons inside Diamond's storage ring travel at a speed that would allow them to travel around the world 7.5 times in one second. It would take them just over eight minutes to travel to the Sun.
Once south Oxfordshire was chosen, construction began in 2003. It was to take four years and two million man hours to complete, with the bulk of the £260m funding coming from the Government and 14 per cent from the Wellcome Trust. Funding of £120m to create a further 15 beamlines has already been confirmed Fittingly, the first Diamond user was Prof Dave Stuart, head of structural biology at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics University.
With his colleague, Yvonne Jones, he carried out a series of experiments to visualise the structure of a protein molecule that is found in our cells.
Prof Stuart said: "This research will provide vital knowledge to assist in the design of more effective drugs to combat certain types of cancer."
Dr Thomas Sorensen, one of Diamond's beam scientists, who specialises in the structure of proteins, believes the facility will also significantly contribute to advances in drugs for malaria and HIV.
"That is what's so exciting about working here for me. There are so many different specialists working in the same place," he said.
More than 330 people already work at Diamond and Dr Sorensen believes it could become a magnet to pharmaceutical companies and other industries, anxious to have bases near the facility.
But it has been the Diamond's potential to unravel historical questions that has been generating the most headlines around the world.
Preliminary work in the summer established that the Dead Sea Scrolls could be examined, with the synchrotron to retrieve information from the fragile parchments and to study how they can be prevented from deteriorating.
Prof Tim Wess, of Cardiff University, said: "This is something we can take forward to try to unravel the secrets inside documents we are too scared to unroll."
In the case of the Mary Rose, the Diamond's X-rays will be used to investigate the presence of sulphurous compounds in the salvaged wood, which are thought to be slowly turning into highly corrosive sulphuric acid and eating away at the ship's timbers.
It is hoped that knowledge of how these compounds react will guide future efforts to halt 'erosion' of Henry VIII's warship.
The power of the X-ray has inevitably led local people to focus on its safety.
Brian Rudge, head of the health and safety team, said: "The physical design of the building brings health and safety risks down to a very low level. In a similar way to hospital X-ray machines, the synchrotron can be switched off in less than a second."
The vast ring around which the electrons hurtle is encased in two layers of concrete, with cranes required to lift sections of the tunnel out.
Prof Materlik said: "From the beginning we have emphasised the importance of community collaboration. In July, we held an open day, which attracted more than 4,000 people."
After The Queen's tour today, schoolchildren from Chilton Primary School to watch a display by the British Army Parachute Regiment display team.
The Red Devils might still have the edge on flying electrons when it comes to spectacle.
But by then Her Majesty should have seen enough to view Diamond as the new jewel in her kingdom's scientific crown.=