By summerstudent Lorenzo Ubilla>
Bessy II is a giant ring where dancing electrons create x ray light used by over 40 beam lines. As Newton once said, it stands on giant’s shoulders (quite literally since its located between Albert Einstein Str. And Max Planck Str.) and hundreds of scientists go there everyday to accomplish their goals or pale in frustration.
The first day I went to Bessy, I was amazed by the complexity of the experimental setups: cables and tubes coming and going everywhere, giant and noisy machines, and a huge ring crowning it all. One of the members of the VEKMAG (Vector Superconducting Magnet) team summed it up by saying “the experiments are really big because what we want to measure is really small”.
That being said, you shouldn’t feel obliged to know every single detail of your setup any more than you need to know Maxwell’s equations to turn on a lightbulb. This is the culmination of centuries of scientific and technological innovation.
It’s also good to keep in mind that no experiment goes straight from start to finish unchallenged. Like in The Garden of Forking Paths by Borges, its a labyrinth of possible outcomes that coexist simultaneously and look different for each person: magnets get loose and throw your samples on the floor, delicate components break and need to be repaired by the manufacturer, unexpected shutdowns of the ring happen or simply the measurements don’t yield the results that you expect. Some say that, at night, ghosts of past scientists wander through the hall and decalibrate the experiments.
I would like to thank my family, my supervisor and to the other students, all of whom supported me in different ways through the summer programme. Also I would like to thank fellow student Franco Vicario for recommending me to join this programme.
About me: My name is Lorenzo Ubilla, I come from Rosario, Argentina and I’m doing my Masters in Physics at the Universidad Nacional de Rosario (UNR). My project is about generating anti-skyrmions in a FeNiPdP sample. This can lead to a more efficient way of transporting and storing information.