Synchrotron Traditional Cache

There are an increasing number of caches along the Bridgewater Canal, and there's always room for one more. The difference with this cache is its location.

It is a tribute to the SRS, or Synchrotron Radiation Source located at Daresbury laboratories. Whilst I'm no expert, Synchrotron Radiation has enabled many scientific breakthroughs. Rather than me try and explain, I'll use an extract from the SRS website (http://www.srs.ac.uk/srs/)

Cleaner fuel, safer aircraft and new medicines, not to mention a Nobel prize, great tasting chocolate and iPods - all of these things have been influenced or made possible by world leading scientific research carried out on the Synchrotron Radiation Source at the Science and Technology Facilities Council’s Daresbury Laboratory in Warrington, which closes today, 4th August 2008, after 28 years of operation and two million hours of science.

The SRS was a genuine world first, pioneering the way for the development of 60 similar machines around the world.  Since 1980 it has played a key role in enabling and performing cutting edge research in many areas of UK and international science.  The SRS produces beams of light so intense that they can reveal the structure of atoms and molecules inside materials.  It produces this light by generating beams of high energy electrons travelling close to the speed of light. Over the last 28 years, synchrotron light has supported cutting-edge research in physics, chemistry and materials science and opened up many new areas of research in fields such as medicine, geological and environmental studies, structural genomics and archaeology.

The SRS has improved the quality of our lives in a remarkable number of ways that we take for granted. As examples, it has helped develop new medicines by studying the atomic structure of proteins; it has enabled the production of new materials for use in electronics and clothing; it has led to the development of new detergents. It has even played a role in improving the taste of chocolate and the safety of aircraft by looking at the crystal formations in chocolate and metal.  Even the huge magnetic memory of the iPod is due to research carried out on the SRS.  However, its most famous achievement by far is the critical role it played towards a share of a Nobel prize in chemistry to Sir John Walker in 1997, for solving a structure of an enzyme that opened the way for new insights into metabolic and regenerative disease.

During its lifetime, the SRS has collaborated with almost every country active in scientific research.  It has hosted over 11,000 users from academia, government laboratories and industry worldwide, leading to the publication of more than 5000 research papers in leading journals.  It has resulted in numerous patents and has solved over 1200 protein structures.