ALSNews is a biweekly electronic newsletter to keep users and other interested parties informed about developments at the Advanced Light Source, a national user facility located at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, University of California. We welcome suggestions for topics and content.
Previous Issues are available.
User beamtime is scheduled to resume on June 10. But, as in the case of a problem child who grows up to do something worthwhile in later years to everyone's surprise, we now like to recount the childhood biography of this special form of light that has turned out to be so useful. The story is inextricably linked with the dynamic evolution of nuclear physics throughout the 20th century and in particular with the development of particle accelerators during the 1930s and 40s. As in all good stories, there's a cosmic angle-synchrotron light as a form of starlight has been around since time began. And there are giants in the land-scientific giants the likes of Maxwell, Bohr, and Rutherford, among others.