XFEL: The X-ray laser comes to town
The X-ray laser comes to town
There will be something for everyone at the Hamburg Summer of Knowledge festival from 20th - 23th June. Copyright European XFEL
How is the world's brightest X-ray beam produced? And what do scientists use it to study? From Thursday to Sunday, European XFEL and DESY together with other Hamburg research institutions will be bringing HiTech to the Hamburg City Hall market square to answer these and many other questions. A superlight exhibition, hands-on activities and captivating lectures are all part of the four day science festival "Summer of Knowledge" taking place in the heart of Hamburg.
The Hamburg Summer of Knowledge, involving nearly 40 Hamburg institutions and organisations, invites everyone to take part and get involved. In the ‘HiTech Labor’ Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron (DESY), European XFEL, the Max-Planck-Institut für Struktur und Dynamik der Materie (MPSD), the Centre for Structural Systems Biology (CSSB), the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) and the Hamburg Centre for Ultrafast Imaging (CUI), will offer visitors insights into the world of research using X-ray light sources. A 1.3 ton accelerator component will also be on display, brought especially to the city centre for the event.
On Thursday 20 June from 14:30 visitors can take a virtual tour of European XFEL. Copyright European XFEL
In addition, visitors to the exhibition in the HiTech Lab can observe a hair-thin water jet under the microscope and with a high-speed camera, or calculate a diffraction image based on portrait photos. DESY explains with a superconducting train model (Thursday and Friday) how superconduction works and how it is used for particle acceleration. On Thursday, 20 June, visitors can also experience the light of the future virtually by using VR goggles to take a walk through the X-ray laser European XFEL. Or they dive into DESY´s researcher´s world in a virtual game experience (also on Thursday afternoon).
More about the Summer of Knowledge on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the Universität Hamburg can be found here.
Time: 20th – 23rd June, daily from 9am
Location: Rathausmarkt, Hamburg
