Brief Encounter

ISIS is a particle physics laboratory in Oxfordshire, U.K that houses a synchrotron — or particle accelerator — which creates beams of neutrons and muons traveling at 84 percent of light speed. Scientists use the beams to explore physics, chemistry, biology and other fields on a subatomic level. The synchrotron's neutron beam has a special ability to view the atomic world in a detailed, non-destructive way. This image illustrates the science that can be done at ISIS.

Neutrons fly through a crystal lattice. As neutrons interact with the nuclei of atoms, they 'see' matter as mostly empty space and as a result, they are a highly penetrating probe. However, another consequence of this property is that the majority of incident neutrons pass straight though any sample that is placed in their path and hence neutron scattering from materials is relatively weak. This has a major influence on the design of neutron scattering instrumentation, where the emphasis is increasingly on using large detector arrays to record those small numbers of neutrons that are scattered.

--LiveScience Staff

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Credit: ISIS Facility