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Science Technology

Northern Bright Lights 57

Posted by michael from the spf-5000 dept.
Gn0M3KInG writes "CBC Canada is reporting that the largest Canadian science project in 30 years, a $174 million synchrotron is about to be fired up in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan (Canada - duh!). This little device is capable of generating light millions of times brighter than the sun, and is the first of it's kind in North America. Looks like this could lead to some VERY cool research developments like creating better microchips, and watching living cells react to drugs (amongst others)."
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Northern Bright Lights More

Northern Bright Lights

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  • Hmm (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Is CBC Canada like BBC Great Britain?
    • CBC [nationmaster.com] = Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. It is a crown corporation [wikipedia.org], and has no affiliation with the BBC.
      • I believe the parent poster was remarking that it's redundant:

        CBC Canada turns into Canadian Broadcasting Corporation Canada. Just like BBC Great Britain would be, I think, British Broadcasting Corporation Great Britain.
    • What about ABC in the US?
    • It's possible to say CBC Canada to distinguish the National Broadcasting Centre from the regional broadcasting centres (e.g. CBC Vancouver, CBC Ottawa). However, most people would just say CBC to refer to the national centre. As for CBC Quebec, I think SRC would refer to the main broadcaster and SRC Vancouver, SRC Ottawa, etc would be the preferred way to refer to regional divisions of Societe Radio Canada -- the French language CBC. CBC Quebec would perhaps be the CBC in Quebec City, if there is one.

  • Wow! (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    A shiny new synchrotron in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. Spiffy.

  • Very cool. (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    As noted you can nifty things with these like make movies of crystal structures deforming.

    And FWIW it amounts to an x-ray laser.

  • Arrrggghh! (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Zee Goggles! Zey do nothing!

  • Curious... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Spytap ( 143526 ) on Friday October 22, 2004 @10:31AM (#10598432)
    What is the sound of a million blinded Canadians blinking?

  • Warning (Score:5, Funny)

    by craXORjack ( 726120 ) on Friday October 22, 2004 @10:33AM (#10598450)
    Do not look into synchrotron with remaining eye.

  • Thrust (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Profane MuthaFucka ( 574406 ) <busheatskok@gmail.com> on Friday October 22, 2004 @10:38AM (#10598531) Homepage Journal
    So what is the thrust of a light source millions of times brighter than the sun? Are you thinking what I'm thinking?
    • Are you thinking what I'm thinking?

      I don't know, but if it includes an irrational particle accelerator, a liquid lunch and a pair of rubber bands you can count me out!
    • I find it hard to believe this is actually brighter than the sun. I have on very good authority that the Sun is very, very bright. For some reason, many of the almost incomprehensibly huge balls of plasma in the universe are that way, though.

      I suspect they mean "brighter than the sun appears on the earth", but I'm not even entirely sure what means.

      I wonder how many libraries of congress full of these things would be required to illuminate a football field?

    • Re:Thrust (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Fortran IV ( 737299 )

      If you're thinking "solar sail" (synchrotron sail?), then think of this: A light source 10 million times brighter than the Sun would still have to be about 440 km in diameter to have the same light output as the Sun. I doubt Canada is yet ready to build such a large installation.

      If on the other hand you're thinking of an Angel's Pencil laser drive: IANA physicist, and I'm frankly over my head with this.
  • Imagine having to pay such a fee for your house! :)
    • Yeah, the other side of the coin is "Gee, isn't it nice to be able to have an excess of electricity to run that sucker and still light up the rest of the province"

  • "That light comes off as a continuum, similar to what you see when the sun shines after a thunderstorm and you get the rainbow effect," said scientist Jeff Cutler of Canadian Light Source. "Same kind of idea here except we generate infrared, we generate visible, and we generate soft and hard X-rays."

    wait... don't rainstorm-rainbows separate out the other frequencies also (except for the frequences that water absorms)? If we could see infrared, ultraviolet, X-rays, etc., our rainbows would be wider and ha
    • Not more bands. The rainbow having six bands is a by-product of having three color filters in our eyes. In our case, they are Red, Green, and Blue.

      If you want more bands, add to the RGB triplet in our eyes (IRGB? RGBU?). And then re-design the CRT and color TV systems to accomodate, since the monitors will appear to be "burned out", the way they look when green goes out and all you have is red, blue, and intermediate shades of violet.
    • don't rainstorm-rainbows separate out the other frequencies also (except for the frequences that water absorms)?

      Water vapor is rather opaque to most a lot of ultraviolet light (that's why we can live here, since the atmosphere filters it out). IR is also pretty well absorbed (warmth). The whole reason we see visible light is that that was what mattered for evolution - it's what was there for the most part.
    • Besides, this is likely a case of a scientist trying to speak in layman's terms to a reporter. Probably half the reporters that Mr Cutler has spoken to don't know a spectrum from a speculum.

  • Ohh, the chronic we could grow with this thing...
    Talk about watching living cells react to drugs!!!!
  • As my eyes get weaker I may look to buy the consumer version of this thing to read by at night.

  • Synchrotron list (Score:3, Informative)

    by Mark of THE CITY ( 97325 ) on Friday October 22, 2004 @12:18PM (#10599670) Journal
    Here's a page of links to various synchrotrons around the world:

    http://www-als.lbl.gov/als/synchrotron_sources.h tm l

  • Ay? (Score:1, Offtopic)

    by itwerx ( 165526 )
    (Canada - duh!)

    Er, shouldn't that be "Cana-duh!"...? :)

    Speaking of which, y'know how they came up with the name "Canada", right?
    Seems the early Europeans invaders, er, immigrants, were sitting around the campfire one night trying to come up with something easier to remember than all the funky names the locals used.
    After some time arguing they finally decided the best thing to do would be just put a bunch of letters in a hat and see what they pulled out.
    "C, ay?"
    "N, ay?"
    "D, ay?"

    (I hear
    • "C, ay?"
      "N, ay?"
      "D, ay?"

      Yet another testement to the wonderful public education system found south of 49.

      It's correctly spelt:
      "C, eh?"
      "N, eh?"
      "D, eh?"

      Personally, I blame Webster's policy of "spell it how you want, we'll make it legit"

    • You mean eh, don't you? Not much of a cana-coinnoiseur, eh? Maybe all you need on a cool October day like today is to throw on a nice warm bunnyhug and have a slice of Saskatoon berry pie. Ohhhhh yeaaah. Eh.
    • Canada is actually a misspelling of Kanata, the Huron-Iroquois word for "village". Idoit european settlers cam eover here, and asked the natives where they were, and when they said "Kanata", they thought it mean the name of the country.

      More details [canadianheritage.gc.ca]

      • Reminds me of how kangaroos came to be called 'kangaroos'.

        As I heard it told, an explorer/convict/whatever saw a strange animal bouncing by. He asked an Aborigine, who he happened to be with, what that animal was called.

        "Kangaroo," said the Aborigine. Or, to translate it into English: "I dunno."

    • WARNING! GERMAN HUMOR ALERT! WARNING!

      Warum heisst Canada, "Canada"?

      Weil da sind keiner da!

      Followed by much German laughter, drinking of beer and an invasion of France through the low countries.

  • Runs on Red Hat Linux (Score:3)

    by Freshly Exhumed ( 105597 ) on Friday October 22, 2004 @01:17PM (#10600706) Homepage
    Take a look at the Real or Quicktime videos at double size starting at about the 56 second mark and you'll see that key control computers run Red Hat Linux.

    • Re:Runs on Red Hat Linux (Score:4, Interesting)

      by WasteOfAmmo ( 526018 ) on Friday October 22, 2004 @02:18PM (#10601792) Journal
      Yes, we run Red Hat Linux on many of the servers both over at the CLS and here on the rest of campus. Our Computer Science dept. also runs Mandrake Linux in many of the undergrad labs.

      We currently license Mandrake so that all students on campus may download the distros from us. We also license MSDN for our Computer Science students.

      Incidently, CLS/UofS also runs Win2k3, various distros of Linux, Solaris, etc., etc. It is not so much of a case of OS religious wars as it is of using the right tool for the right job. The "right tool" is defined by the requirments of the project (which of course includes licensing costs as well as tech req.).

      bottom line: there is nothing wonderful and new to see here. These are not OS war propaganda materials your looking for. Just real IT people solving real IT problems using all available tools. Please move on.

      Merlin.

  • Fortunately for us, sunlight does not have X-ray in its spectrum. To do better at microelectronic fab, you need shorter wavelength light sources...the ones we have now are already bright enough. If you mean to improve microscopy [for viewing cells in vivo as suggested] by using a light source millions of times brighter than the sun, you better look darn quick...that lil' puppy is gonna vaporize in a microsecond or two and you with it if you don't stand back far enough.
    Obviously I gotta RTFA cause what I k

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