Rutherford Appleton Laboratory
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL) at the Chilton/Harwell Science Campus is a UK scientific research laboratory near Didcot in Oxfordshire. It has a staff of around 1,200 who support the work of over 10,000 scientists and engineers, mainly from the university research community.
RAL is run by the Council for the Central Laboratory of the Research Councils (CCLRC). It is named after the physicists Ernest Rutherford and Edward Appleton.
The Rutherford High Energy Laboratory was set up on the former RAF Harwell airfield between Chilton and Harwell in 1957, and merged with the Atlas and Appleton Laboratories in 1975 and 1979, respectively, to form the current laboratory. The CCLRC was set up to run RAL as well as Daresbury Laboratory in 1996.
RAL hosts ISIS, the brightest spallation neutron source in the world, which uses neutron scattering to study the structure and behaviour of materials, providing research capabilities for around 1600 scientists from a range of disciplines, and has been operating since 1985.
RAL was chosen as the site for the synchrotron light source Diamond, which is due to open officially in January 2007.
The Central Laser Facility, which houses the Vulcan and Astra lasers, is also located in RAL.
RAL also hosts a number of other resources and services in particle physics, atmospheric sciences, space science, spectroscopy and renewable energy research.
[edit] Projects
RAL staff are involved with a huge number of national and international projects.
- Space Science and Technology
- E-Science
- Particle Physics
- Large Hadron Collider
- LHC Computing Grid
- ATLAS experiment
- LHCb
- Compact Muon Solenoid
- International Linear Collider
- MINOS - Main Injector Neutrino Oscillation Search
- Large Hadron Collider
- ISIS - neutron source
- Diamond - light source.
