Designing instruments for the future in Big Science: ESS and MAX IV in the making

Experimental science has a long tradition of working in large research facilities, as CERN and astronomy’s big telescopes. For current days investment in experimentation, facilities like European Spallation Source (ESS) using neutrons and MAX IV using X-rays to probe materials to learn about their structures and properties are at the central stage. Both situated in Lund and developed in parallel, they provide a unique opportunity for this book to tell the story about how the instruments where the experiments are to be done are being designed, some 10 years before they go online. Each facility offering eventually at least 20 instruments, all in different ways manipulating the x-ray or neutron beam, in order to ‘see’ deeper into alloys, proteins, atoms, to know their composition and properties. Promises of results are wide ranging, contributing to healthy ageing, better medicines, new alloys, longer lasting batteries. This book will in depth investigate how the instruments are shaped to answer tomorrow’s research questions, pushing towards more advanced techniques, reaching out into new fields and new users, yet catering for already established user communities around Europe and the world.
The book is centrally placed within the science and technology study tradition, deepening our knowledge by focusing on the instruments providing the conditions for experimentation, and capturing the phase where still everything is perceived as possible, and nothing yet black boxed.