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The European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF) is a joint research facility situated in Grenoble, France, supported by 22 countries (13 member countries: France, Germany, Italy, the UK, Spain, Switzerland, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden, Russia; and 9 associate countries: Austria, Portugal, Israel, Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia, India and South Africa). Some 8,000 scientists visit this particle accelerator each year, conducting upwards of 2,000 experiments and producing around 1,800 scientific publications.


History

Inaugurated in September 1994, it has an annual budget of around 100 million euros, employs over 630 people and is host to more than visiting scientists each year. In 2009, the ESRF began a first major improvement in its capacities. With the creation of the new ultra-stable experimental hall of 8,000 m2 in 2015, its X-rays are 100 times more powerful, with a power of 100 billion times that of hospital radiography devices. The second improvement to the facilities, now named the "Extremely Brilliant Source" (ESRF-EBS), took place between 2018 and 2020. and again improved its X-ray power by a factor of 100,france3-regions.francetvinfo.fr, Grenoble : le premier faisceau de rayons X observé dans le synchrotron nouvelle génération.
/ref> or 10,000 billion more powerful than X-rays used in the medical field. It became the first fourth-generation high-energy synchrotron in the world. The first electron beam tests began on November 28, 2019. The facility reopened to users on August 25, 2020.


General description

The ESRF physical plant consists of two main buildings: the experiment hall, containing the 844 metre circumference ring and forty tangential beamlines; and a block of
laboratories A laboratory (; ; colloquially lab) is a facility that provides controlled conditions in which scientific or technological research, experiments, and measurement may be performed. Laboratory services are provided in a variety of settings: physicia ...
, preparation suites, and offices connected to the ring by a pedestrian bridge. The linear accelerator electron gun and smaller booster ring used to bring the beam to an operating energy of 6 GeV are constructed within the main ring. Until recently bicycles were provided for use indoors in the ring's circumferential corridor. Unfortunately they have been removed after some minor accidents. But even before this it was not possible to cycle continuously all the way around, since some of the beamlines exit the hall. Research at the ESRF focuses, in large part, on the use of X-ray radiation in fields as diverse as protein
crystallography Crystallography is the experimental science of determining the arrangement of atoms in crystalline solids. Crystallography is a fundamental subject in the fields of materials science and solid-state physics (condensed matter physics). The wor ...
,
earth science Earth science or geoscience includes all fields of natural science related to the planet Earth. This is a branch of science dealing with the physical, chemical, and biological complex constitutions and synergistic linkages of Earth's four spheres ...
, paleontology, materials science,
chemistry Chemistry is the science, scientific study of the properties and behavior of matter. It is a natural science that covers the Chemical element, elements that make up matter to the chemical compound, compounds made of atoms, molecules and ions ...
and physics. Facilities such as the ESRF offer a flux, energy range and resolution unachievable with conventional (laboratory) radiation sources.


Study results

In 2014, ancient books destroyed by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 are read for the first time in the ESRF. These 1840 fragments were reduced to the status of charred cylinders. In 2015, scientists from the University of Sheffield have used the ESRF's X-rays to study the blue and white feathers of the
Jay A jay is a member of a number of species of medium-sized, usually colorful and noisy, passerine birds in the Crow family (biology), family, Corvidae. The evolutionary relationships between the jays and the magpies are rather complex. For examp ...
and have found that birds use well-controlled changes to the nanostructure of their
feather Feathers are epidermal growths that form a distinctive outer covering, or plumage, on both avian (bird) and some non-avian dinosaurs and other archosaurs. They are the most complex integumentary structures found in vertebrates and a premier ...
s to create the vivid colours of their plumage. This research opens new possibilities for creating non-fading, synthetic colours for paints and clothing. In July 2016, a team of South Africa researchers scans a complete fossilized skeleton of a small dinosaur discovered in 2005 in South Africa and older than 200 million years. The dentition of heterodontosauridae scanned revealed palate bones of less than a millimeter thick. On December 6, 2017, the journal Nature unveils the discovery at the European synchrotron of a new species of dinosaur with surprising characteristics and living about 72 million years ago. It is a biped, mix between a velociraptor, an ostrich and a swan with a crocodile muzzle and penguin wings. With a height of about 1.2 meters (4 ft) and with killer claws, he could hunt his prey on the ground or hunt by swimming in the water, which is a novelty for scientists in the study of dinosaurs. In November 2021, researchers demonstrated a novel X-ray imaging technique, "HiP-CT", for 3D cellular-resolution scans of whole organs, using the ESRF's "Extremely Brilliant Source". The published online Human Organ Atlas includes the lungs from a donor who died with COVID-19.


Access

The ESRF site forms part of the "
Polygone Scientifique The Polygone Scientifique (en: Scientific Polygon) is a neighborhood of the city of Grenoble in France. It includes a significant number of research centers in a presque-isle between Isère (river), Isère and Drac (river), Drac. History Polygo ...
", lying at the confluence of the rivers Drac and
Isère Isère ( , ; frp, Isera; oc, Isèra, ) is a landlocked department in the southeastern French region of Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes. Named after the river Isère, it had a population of 1,271,166 in 2019.Grenoble. It is served by
Grenoble tramway The Grenoble tramway (french: Tramway de Grenoble) is the tram system in the city of Grenoble in the Rhône-Alpes region of France. In 1987, Grenoble became the second French city to reintroduce trams, the first being the Nantes tramway. The cur ...
system and local bus lines of Semitag (C6, 22 and 54). It is served by Grenoble–Isère Airport and Lyon–Saint-Exupéry Airport. The ESRF shares its site with several other institutions including the Institut Laue-Langevin (ILL), the
European Molecular Biology Laboratory The European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) is an intergovernmental organization dedicated to molecular biology research and is supported by 27 member states, two prospect states, and one associate member state. EMBL was created in 1974 and ...
(EMBL) and the . The Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS) has a
institute
just across the road.


People

* Roderick MacKinnon, Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2003, have caried out experiments on beamline ID13. * Venki Ramakrishnan,
Thomas A. Steitz Thomas Arthur Steitz (August 23, 1940 – October 9, 2018) was an American biochemist, a Sterling Professor of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry at Yale University, and investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, best known for hi ...
, and Ada Yonath, Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2009, have used macromolecular crystallography beamlies (ID14-1, -2, -4; and ID29) at the ESRF. * Brian Kobilka and Robert Lefkowitz, Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2012, have has carried out experiments mainly on beamline ID13.


See also

*
List of Synchrotron Radiation Facilities This is a table of synchrotrons and storage rings used as synchrotron radiation sources, and free electron laser A free-electron laser (FEL) is a (fourth generation) light source producing extremely brilliant and short pulses of radiation. An F ...
* European Research Area (ERA) * TANGO (control system originally developed at the ESRF) *
The African Light Source The African Light Source (AfLS) – as of December 2022 – is the initiative to build the first Pan-African synchrotron light source. The initiative is currently led – separately – by the African Light Source (AfLS) Foundation and the Africa ...
(AfLS)


References


External links


ESRF.euLightsources.org24 hours at the X-ray factory
by Richard Van Noorden on Nature {{Authority control Science and technology in Grenoble Synchrotron radiation facilities Particle accelerators History of physics Science and technology in Europe Research institutes in France International research institutes Science and Technology Facilities Council