Interesting Facts and Figures

  • The circumference of the synchrotron's ring is 96 m.
     
  • Electrons travel through the ring at a speed of ~300 000 km/s.
  • The time that it takes one electron beam to circle the ring is: 320 nanoseconds = 0.00000032 seconds; that means that in one second the electrons circle the rug more than 3 million times!
     
  • The number of electrons rushing through the ring is about 1 000 000 000 000 = 1012.
     
  • The vacuum created inside the synchrotron is at the level of 10-11 mbar, meaning that in 1 cm3 there are about 100 000 particles of gas.
     
  • The linear accelerator in the synchrotron is 40 meters long and weighs about w 3 tons.
     
  • One of the magnets from the vacuum chamber weighs about 8 tons. The whole synchrotron weighs more than 100 tons. If we add to that the power sources, and linear and modular accelerators, its total weight reaches approximately 150 tons.
     
  • The temperature stabilization installation for the components of the synchrotron hold more than 8 thousand litres of demineralized water, which runs through a closed circulation system in nearly 300 independent hydraulic circuits. Their total length is 4.5 kilometres, while their pumping capacity is 4100 litres/minute (or almost 410 buckets of water in a minute). The installation absorbs 2000 kW of heat energy.
     
  • The system which controls the synchrotron gathers and processes about 5 thousand different signals from various measuring devices and controllers. These signals supply information about the parameters of the accelerator, and convey information about the temperature of specific components, the state of the vacuum systems, the location and parameters of the electron beams, or the light generated by the synchrotron, just to name a few.  Some of these are ELF signals, operating at frequencies of no more than 10 Hz (or 10 times a second), while others are extremely fast signals emitted by devices which monitor and control the beams of electrons and photons, supplying information with a frequency of up to 1GHz, or a billion times a second.
     
  • The brightness of the synchrotron radiation is one billion times greater than the brightness of light emitted from the surface of the Sun.