World-leading facility for research in the physical and life sciences
Photo: ISIS Neutron and Muon Source TS2 interior view. TS2 is part of a larger complex that includes a synchrotron, which accelerates protons to bombard a target, producing neutrons and muons.
Each year CPS members visit a different location of scientific interest on a summer visit. This year members visited the ISIS Neutron and Muon Source, a world-leading facility for research in the physical and life sciences, based at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL) near Didcot in Oxfordshire.
The ISIS Neutron and Muon Source produces intense beams of neutrons and muons that enable materials to be studied at the atomic and molecular level, offering insights that other techniques cannot. The facility provides researchers with access to a suite of instruments, each optimised for studying different properties of matter. Research at ISIS spans a broad range of fields, from chemistry and catalysis to engineering components; cell membranes to battery materials; drug delivery mechanisms to microelectronics; and geological investigations to archaeological studies. ISIS serves a community of several thousand academic and industrial researchers from the UK and overseas.
Memebers also visited the Central Laser Facility (CLF), one of the world’s leading laser facilities, based at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL). The CLF’s wide ranging applications include experiments in physics, chemistry and biology, accelerating subatomic particles to high energies, probing chemical reactions on the shortest timescales and studying biochemical and biophysical process critical to life itself.
RAL employs nearly 1,200 people and every year around 10,000 scientists and engineers use the laboratory’s facilities to advance their research.
As a benefit of membership of the CPS, members take part in free visits throughout the year to various science related locations across the UK. To join the Cambridge Philosophical Society visit our membership page here
Photo: Cambridge Philosophical Society Fellows inside the ISIS Neutron and Muon Source based at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL) near Didcot in Oxfordshire.
Photo: Forensic investigation on ancient weaponry. The research used neutron tomography to see the internal structure of the objects and detect the use of glue and other modern tools and materials.
Photo: Aerial view of ISIS Neutron and Muon Source is based at the STFC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Oxfordshire
From Darwin’s paper on evolution to the development of stem cell research, publications from the Society continue to shape the scientific landscape.
Mathematical Proceedings is one of the few high-quality journals publishing original research papers that cover the whole range of pure and applied mathematics, theoretical physics and statistics.
Biological Reviews covers the entire range of the biological sciences, presenting several review articles per issue. Although scholarly and with extensive bibliographies, the articles are aimed at non-specialist biologists as well as researchers in the field.
The Spirit of Inquiry celebrates the 200th anniversary of the remarkable Cambridge Philosophical Society and brings to life the many remarkable episodes and illustrious figures associated with the Society, including Adam Sedgwick, Mary Somerville, Charles Darwin, and Lawrence Bragg.
Become a Fellow of the Society and enjoy the benefits that membership brings. Membership costs £20 per year.
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Volcanoes are hazardous and beautiful manifestations of the dynamic processes that have shaped our planet. Volcanoes impact our environment in numerous ways. Over geological time volcanic activity has resurfaced the Earth and provided life with a terrestrial substrate upon which to proliferate. Volcanic degassing has shaped our secondary atmosphere and as part of the process of plate tectonics, maintained just the right amount of water and carbon dioxide at the surface to produce a stable and equitable climate. Magma in the subsurface in volcanic environments today gives Society geothermal energy. The fluids degassed from magmas in the plumbing systems of volcanoes give rise to hydrothermal ore deposits, the source of much of our copper and other metals, critical to the energy transition. In this lecture I will describe the nature and importance of magma degassing for our atmosphere and oceans, as a source of both pollutants and nutrients, and in the formation of mineral deposits. I will describe my own research in carrying out measurements of volcanic gases (using a range of spectroscopic methods, from the ground and using drones), and analysis of erupted lavas, to understand the chemistry and physics of volcanic outgassing and its role in sustaining our planetary environment.
One of the many outstanding achievements of G I Taylor was the discovery of relatively simple statistical laws that apply to highly complex turbulent flows. The emergence of simple laws from complexity is well known in other branches of physics, for example the emergence of the laws of heat conduction from molecular dynamics. Complexity can also arise at large scales, and the structural vibration of an aircraft or a car can be a surprisingly difficult phenomenon to analyse, partly because millions of degrees of freedom may be involved, and partly because the vibration can be extremely sensitive to small changes or imperfections in the system. In this talk it is shown that the prediction of vibration levels can be much simplified by the derivation and exploitation of emergent laws, analogous to some extent to the heat conduction equations, but with an added statistical aspect, as in turbulent flow. The emergent laws are discussed and their application to the design of aerospace, marine, and automotive structures is described. As an aside it will be shown that the same emergent theory can be applied to a range of problems involving electromagnetic fields.
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Please contact philosoc@group.cam.ac.uk to agree a timing before visiting the office.