How do we promote Materials Science? That is a question asked by Joerg Heber after a visit at The European Spallation Source in Lund, Sweden. Joerg met with Science Director Dimitri Argyriou and wrote this on his blog All that matters:

"The study of materials is one of the major areas of science, with legions of researchers in physics, chemistry and materials science working on this topic. Condensed matter physics is one of the largest research areas in physics. Yet, it makes me often uneasy how the benefits of materials science are promoted. It is all too often about applications, and not about fundamental physics.

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Last week I visited the European Spallation Source (ESS) in Lund, Sweden, which is currently under construction. From 2019 onwards the ESS will use neutron beams to study various properties of materials. And I’ve discussed with ESS’s science director Dimitry Argyriou how to promote such a facility. Of course, the materials research done at the ESS will hugely benefit all the important applications that I mentioned above, and more. And for this reason alone the costs of the ESS (1.5 billion Euro, if not a little more) seem justified."

Read the whole blogpost here.