In the Melbourne suburb of Clayton, a campus of buildings is dominated by one massive circular structure: the Australian Synchrotron.

It was designed, built, and is carefully operated with one key goal – to create light for science.

How the ‘science donut’ works

A synchrotron is a particle accelerator, a feat of engineering designed to spin electrons around in stainless steel vacuum chambers at incredible speeds, and then manipulate them to produce light.

It all starts with the electron gun and linear accelerator. The gun makes electrons, firing them into the accelerator, which revs them up to close to the speed of light. From here they enter the first stainless steel ring – the booster ring.

Each electron only spends about half a second in the booster ring, but in that time, steered by electromagnets, it completes over one million laps, and on each lap it is ‘boosted’ – fed a bit more energy.

Highly energised and still travelling at high speeds, the electrons head to the storage ring. Here, the electrons are forced to ‘bend’ using large dipole magnets. When they change direction in this way, they lose some of their energy, which gets released in the form of light.

Example of a dipole magnet used to bend the electrons in the storage ring which forces them to create light.
Photo: Claire Concannon / RNZ

“We like to affectionately call the synchrotron the ‘science donut’ sometimes,” says Dr Emily Finch. She’s the manager of the microscopy beamlines. After the ‘donut’ does its job, the light then gets filtered, focused and directed into what’s known as beamlines.

Each of the beamlines is equipped with research equipment and offices to allow researchers to come and use the light to investigate whatever it is they are interested in.

Which is extremely varied.

From revealing hidden paintings to designing cancer drugs

“So our director’s favourite trick in a talk is to stand up and say – give me a topic and I’ll tell you where we do research on it,” says science operations manager Dr Helen Brand.

Between the beamlines, the corridors in this giant building are decorated with research posters of different experiments, and it’s quickly clear where the director’s confidence comes from.

One poster describes how a beamline was used to reveal a secret Degas painting. A New Zealand team used the same beamline to figure out the elements present in a spiny rock lobster.

There are currently 14 working beamlines, with plans to expand. Most of the beamlines use x-ray light, but each of them is different, and therefore specialised in answering particular research questions.

For example, the macromolecular x-ray crystallography beamline is all about using x-ray diffraction to figure out the structure of molecules.

Cancer drugs and antimicrobial peptides

It’s Ben Krinkel’s fourth time to the Australian Synchrotron. In his third year of his PhD at the University of Auckland, Ben is investigating a potential cancer drug.

He is using the macromolecular x-ray crystallography beamline to find out exactly where his potential drug binds to its target. He’s brought along almost 100 crystal samples to test, hoping he’ll be able to figure out the structure and learn more about how this drug might work.

Shayhan Chunkath, Ben Krinkel and Dr Rosie Young in the macromolecular x-ray crystallography beamline.
Photo: Claire Concannon / RNZ

His colleague Shayhan Chunkath, also a PhD candidate at the University of Auckland, has brought a peptide, a tiny protein fragment, that might have antimicrobial properties. He also hopes that the visit to the synchrotron will help him ‘see’ the structure of this tiny peptide, so he can better understand it.

Ben and Shay have also brought with them samples belonging to some research colleagues to be analysed. Because the x-rays are dangerous, this beamline is operated behind a radiation shield door by a robot. Once the samples are loaded in, the researchers can control the robot remotely and run their tests from their offices in Auckland.

New Zealand research institutions, universities and the government, through the New Zealand Synchrotron Group Ltd, have bought in to the Australian Synchrotron, and it is part of the 2017 Australia-New Zealand science, research and innovation cooperation agreement. Because of this, New Zealand researchers like Ben and Shay can apply for time on a specific beamline and for travel grants to visit and do their research.

With 113 separate visits made by New Zealand teams to the synchrotron in the last year, there’s a huge diversity of New Zealand research happening in this ‘science shed’ across the ditch.

Stay tuned for more on this next week!

Travel to Australia for reporting on this story was supported by the New Zealand Synchrotron Group Ltd.