Life on board ESS

This week ESS had to cancel the third Steering Committee Meeting in Bilbao, Spain, due to the ash cloud over Europe. I think it was a wise decision by the ESS management.

Staff at ESS were of course a bit disappointed seeing all their work and preparations for this meeting litterally going up in smoke. But luckily we stand quite prepared with a load of black humour for situations like this. Something which have actually helped us to cope every now and then in critical situations that sometimes occur in a complex project like the ESS.

There are of course many people who have got into serious trouble due to the ash cloud. Not the least people in Iceland who are already suffering from the financial collapse. I think about you and wish you all the best in your struggle to fix the Icelandic economy. A positive effect in all this could be though that Iceland have probably never got as much international publicity and PR before. So in the long run, an exotic volcano might help tourism and make it easier to open new doors to do business in the future.

For those who like to cheer things up a bit in all this mess, there is a lot of humour on the volcanic subject flourishing around the web:

United Kingdom: "Dear Iceland, we asked for cash, not ash!".

Iceland: "Sorry for the flight delays, Europe. We were aiming for London, but it's hard to be accurate when firing a volcano".

Or this one:

"The last wish of the Icelandic economy was to have its ashes scattered over Europe...".

Locally, here in my mailbox, the news just reached me that our friend, ProfESSor John Larese who gave a speech at the ESS / Lund University seminar series last week, is still in Sweden unable to get home because of the ash cloud. Live and direct from Uppsala (apparently there's a second university town in Sweden after Lund?) John sent me a short reflection on his current situation. He seems to be contemplating over geology stuff, perhaps trying to find some secret code to send as a morse signal to his science colleagues back home across the Atlantic:

"Im sitting in my hotel room in Uppsala, Sweden reflecting on the past few days and how premonitory my lecture at Lund University was. I opened my lecture about Spallation Neutron Souces and Nanomaterials with the Great Smokey Mountains as a backdrop on my title page but little did I think that this Chemistry profESSor from TennESSee, the VOLunteer University was going to fall victim to the Nano silica ash originating from the Smokey Icelandic VOLcano eruption. While some confusion still exists it appears that I still have a few days to ponder if the VOLcano will stop SPALLing out any more Nanosilica ash and this citizen of the VOLunteer state can return home. In the future I'll stick to VOLunteering to scatter neutrons closer to TennESSee and not dodging VOLcanic ash!"

Dear John, I hope you make it back to the US and Tennessee soon and don't suffer too much from “jet lash”. Otherwise you could always settle down in Lund and build a spectrometer or two. We will need them to analyse the huge (but so remarkably invisible) particle clouds that keeps the Europeans from levitating nowadays.

By the way, Johnny cASH was born in Kingsland, ArkanSAS - But he actually died in nASHville TennESSee.. ashESS to ashESS.. I think I need to cough..

End of story.

Oh, one more: "Waiter, there's volcanic ash in my soup. I know, it's a no-fly zone".

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A very passionate talk on "Neutrons, Nanomaterials and Molecular Adsorption" was given this Thursday by Mr. John Z. Larese from University of Tennessee, Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

The audience attending the ESS & Lund University seminar series on "New Science with Max IV and ESS" was introduced to the meaning and mysteries of "surface science".

In a more profound framing of his presentation John started by touching upon some factors which attracts researchers and scientists to settle down, work and live at certain places. It became obvious that beautiful nature combined with dynamic city and campus environments, offering opportunities to do top class research with state-of-the-art technology, were central things. But for a large scale research facility (like the ESS) to become successful, it is important not only to be able to provide instruments with higher resolution and faster speed of data management - the area surrounding the facility must have laboratories and gear for synthesising, characterising and preparation of samples nearby. There must be labs on spot where the researcher can error detect their samples quickly in case something goes wrong with the sample. With valuable and expensive beam time running, it can be devastating to your project if one have to travel long distances in order to optimise research samples and assemble data. Considering these requirements, there is no doubt that the location of the European Spallation Source on the site just north of Lund, will make ESS an integrated part of the Øresund region [map] thus making it possible to benefit from an urban environment which is currently building up one of the worlds most excellent infrastructures for science and research.

On the more hardcore level of John's presentation we became acquaintanced with MgO (Magnesium Oxide), ZnO (Zinc Oxide) and how to carry out basic science experiments producing nanoparticles by burning the substance and then analysing with neutron spectrometry.

Neutron scattering techniques like diffraction, inelastic neutron scattering and spectroscopy, are ideally suited to investigate the structure and dynamics of molecules at the interface of nanoscale materials. John has actually been doing experiments with our own ESS director Colin Carlile during the nineties at the ISIS neutron source using the IRIS spectrometer which Colin spent his life on building (before he spent his life building the ESS AB).

Through synthetic production and characterization of nanometer scale materials like Mgo and ZnO we can create tiny elements of materials which exhibit physical and chemical properties that are dramatically different from ordinary matter.

ZnO can form nanosized tetrapods which can be used for optoelectronics - Sensors combining both light and electricity for fine measurments in technological devices.

High power neutron tools with novel instrumentation will spawn a new generation of science that will dramatically impact the world’s energy and technological future. Investing in this technology and research is of high relevance to the energy challenges we see today. John tells us that it has already made us re-discover solar energy and fuel cells paving the way for a sustainable society.

By combining material synthesis, neutron scattering and modeling theory we can develop accurate potential energy surfaces and predict new routes for developing new materials; understand what factors are important in surface mediation of chemical reactions; synthesise novel materials to address fundamental questions in gas separation, sequestration and storage, catalysis, sensors, energy storage and energy conversion.

Innovation and technological improvements in society is of course the crucial outcome for public investments in big science facilities. In order for a researcher to make new discoveries and innovate, John Larese pointed out the importance of being at the right place at the right time and having the ability to be receptive to the world around you. He also displayed a map of a research program that the SNS and HFIR facilities in the USA runs together with ILL in France and ISIS in the UK.

I think of the ten years I've been working at universities myself: We now live in a digitalised knowledge society with a globalised competition for resources and competences between universities, laboratories and research facilities. Sometimes, barriers of fear and bad campaigning appears on the agenda of competing institutions, countries and organisations with seemingly different interests. But in order to develop science and society on an international level, we rather need to look at the things connecting us which can make us stronger together. John Larese talked about the importance of getting facilities and organisations to talk to each other and help professionals to network, collaborate and build international societies within their fields of interest. When institutions and people choose a more social strategy, creating win-win situations, it becomes easier to expand our universe of arts and science and provide new generations with a greater possibility to find the right place at the right time and become innovative. It is in the mix between different schools, cultures, minds and DNA, where new things evolve. Living in the international environment of Lund, being able to listen to speeches by prominent researchers and meet with interesting people from all around the world, is certainly a time and place which makes me creative!

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The ESS Industry Day took place at the Royal Library in Copenhagen, Denmark on the 19th of February 2010. More than 400 representatives from European business and industry took part and gained information about how to get involved in the construction of the ESS (Photos by Wojciech Zajac and Johan Långberg).

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The closing address to ICNS was given by a lyrical Sunil Sinha, in great form. Sunil reviewed the impact of neutron scattering methods on major fields of science, stressing the uniqueness of neutrons but also the complementarity with synchrotron x-rays. He said, and he was absolutely right, that modern neutron sources sit next to synchrotron x-rays sources. This is why ESS will be built next to the MAX IV synchrotron!

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Somewhat drifting in thought on a recent journey from the windy south to the windy north, I leafed through the “duty-free” magazine. “Pensive, though not in thought” was the way Robert Southey expressed it. (I hasten to add he wasn’t on the same flight !) Anyway my eye was caught by the poetic description of the richnesses to be discovered in a particularly costly bottle of cognac. “Its flavour combines a mixture of oak, floral and fruity notes, predominantly vanilla, with a hint of liquorice, the roundness of summer fruits, especially ripe apricots and peaches and the impertinence of wild flowers, particularly violets.” “…the impertinence of  wild flowers…”  How true I thought ! I have myself been startled this year, so close to the spring equinox, by an impertinent primrose or two, even a sneering snowdrop, poking their noses cheekily out of the grass in Lundagård park. And soon we’ll have to run the gauntlet of the daffodils…  Are the wild flowers getting more disrespectful nowadays or is age beginning to tell on me ?

But perhaps there is a message for us to learn here. Shouldn’t we enthusiasts for the ESS be less prosaic and allow ourselves to be more poetic in our messages ? Not to misrepresent, but simply to appeal. After all it’s human beings who decide whether they need the cognac, and it is human beings who will decide on the ESS.  Whether we like to admit it or not, the same psychological forces are at play.

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