Milestone for microscope

7:51pm Tuesday 7th August 2007

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A major milestone has been reached in the construction of a huge state-of-the-art microscope.

The £140m ISIS Second Target Station project at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, in Harwell, near Didcot, moved a step closer to completion when a tunnel enclosing a proton beam was sealed this week.

The beam will send protons from one end of the 150-metre long tunnel to the other in 10 milliseconds. During their journey they hit a small target allowing items to be studied on a microscopic scale.

Work began on the second ISIS facility over four years ago and it is due to be completed next June.