Friday, March 07, 2008

Science Watch-6: "A Physics record is broken"

In an accomplishment that promises to lead to new drugs, energy advances and other benefits, Tennessee’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory has become the world’s most powerful source of pulsed neutrons.

The $1.4 billion Spallation Neutron Source’s linear accelerator produces a proton beam that strikes a mercury target and creates a stream of subatomic neutrons that are used to study the structure and dynamics of materials.

The beam reached 310 kilowatts, in late January, nearly doubling the 163-kilowatt record held by the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory near Oxford, England. Oak Ridge now holds the Guinness World Record.

“This is basically confirming what we did in January”, a lab spokesman Bill Cabage said. “We confirmed the record.”

Courtesy: AP and The Hindu, March 5, 2008

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