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Lincolnshire

Lincolnshire, abbreviated Lincs, is a ceremonial county in the East Midlands and Yorkshire and the Humber regions of England. It is bordered by the East Riding of Yorkshire across the Humber estuary to the north, the North Sea to the east, Norfolk, Cambridgeshire, Northamptonshire and Rutland to the south, and Leicestershire, Nottinghamshire and South Yorkshire to the west. The county town is the city of Lincoln. Lincolnshire is the second largest county in England after North Yorkshire.

The county is predominantly rural, with an area of 6,959 km2 and a population of 1,095,010. After Lincoln (104,565), the largest towns are Grimsby (85,911) and Scunthorpe (81,286). For local government purposes Lincolnshire comprises a non-metropolitan county, with seven districts, and the unitary authority areas of North Lincolnshire and North East Lincolnshire. The last two areas are part of the Yorkshire and the Humber region, and the rest of the county is in the East Midlands.

Lincolnshire is the second-largest ceremonial county and has a varied geography, including the chalk hills of the Lincolnshire Wolds AONB, the wetlands of the Lincolnshire Fens, the Lincoln Cliff escarpment, and the Lincolnshire Marsh.

Lincolnshire has had a comparatively quiet history, being a rural county which was not heavily industrialised and faced little threat of invasion. In the Roman era Lincoln was a major settlement, called Lindum Colonia. In the fifth century what would become the county was settled by the invading Angles, who established the Kingdom of Lindsey in the north of the region. Lincoln became the centre of a diocese in 1072, and Lincoln Cathedral was built over the following centuries. The late Middle Ages were a particularly prosperous period, when wealth from wool trade facilitated the building of grand churches such as St Botolph's Church, Boston. During the Second World War the relatively flat topography of the county made it an important base for the Royal Air Force, which built several airfields and based two bomber squadrons in the area.

History
During pre-Roman times, most of Lincolnshire was inhabited by the Corieltauvi people. The language of the area at that time would have been Common Brittonic, the precursor to modern Welsh. The name Lincoln was derived from Lindum Colonia.

Large numbers of Germanic speakers from continental Europe settled in the region following the withdrawal of the Romans. Though these were later identified as Angles, it is unlikely that they migrated as part of an organized tribal group. Thus, the main language of the region quickly became Old English. However, it is possible that Brittonic continued to be spoken in some communities as late as the eighth century.

Modern-day Lincolnshire is derived from the merging of the territory of the Kingdom of Lindsey with that controlled by the Danelaw borough of Stamford. For some time the entire county was called "Lindsey", and it is recorded as such in the 11th-century Domesday Book. Later, the name Lindsey was applied to the northern core, around Lincoln. This emerged as one of the three Parts of Lincolnshire, along with the Parts of Holland in the south-east, and the Parts of Kesteven in the south-west, which each had separate Quarter Sessions as their county administrations. Lindsay was traditionally split between the North, South and West Ridings of Lindsey.

The area was shaken by 27 February 2008 Lincolnshire earthquake, reaching between 4.7 and 5.3 on the Richter magnitude scale; it was one of the largest earthquakes to affect Britain in recent years.

Lincolnshire is home to Woolsthorpe Manor, birthplace and home of Sir Isaac Newton. He attended The King's School, Grantham. Its library has preserved his signature, carved into a window sill when he was a youth.

Geography
The geographical layout of Lincolnshire is quite extensive and mostly separated by many rivers and rolling countryside. The north of the county begins from where the Isle of Axholme is located near the meeting points of the rivers Ouse and Trent near to the Humber. From there, the southside of the Humber estuary forms the border between Lincolnshire and the East Riding of Yorkshire. From there, the south bank of the Humber Estuary where the Humber Bridge crosses the estuary at Barton upon Humber, is used primarily for the shipping ports at Immingham, New Holland and Grimsby. From there, the rest of the southern bank forms the Lincolnshire Coast from Cleethorpes to Mablethorpe and then onto Skegness. From Skegness, the rest of the Lincolnshire Coastline forms the sea boundary and border with Norfolk at the Wash. The coast then at Boston becomes the meeting point of the rivers Welland and Haven in a area known as the "Fosdyke Wash".

The rest of the sea boundary runs from Fosdyke to the east of Sutton Bridge, where the current land boundary with Norfolk is located in a narrow area of reclaimed farmland just to the east of the River Nene but until as recently as the early 19th century there was no land border between Lincolnshire and Norfolk as it was separated from each other by the "Cross Keys Wash" a former area of estuary and marshland where the River Nene used to flow out into the Wash and could only be crossed at low tide by a causeway or ferry and was the natural boundary between the two counties. The causeway known at the time as the "Wash Way" was renowned as being particularly treacherous and the safer route was to go into Norfolk from Lincolnshire via the Cambridgeshire town of Wisbech and this element remains to the present day as the Cross Keys Bridge at Sutton Bridge provides the only direct access point to Norfolk from Lincolnshire over the River Nene some nine miles north of Wisbech. The border with Lincolnshire to Cambridgeshire begins at Crowland, Market Deeping and Stamford which form the southern boundary of the county with both Peterborough, Rutland and briefly Northamptonshire; the county's border with Northamptonshire is just 19 m long, England's shortest county boundary. From there, the border with Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire begins at Sleaford, Grantham, Lincoln and Gainsborough. From Gainsborough, the border with South Yorkshire begins at Haxey and Epworth before looping back to the original north of the county near Scunthorpe with East Riding of Yorkshire at the Isle of Axholme and Goole.

Bedrock in Lincolnshire features Jurassic limestone (near Lincoln) and Cretaceous chalk (north-east). The area around Woodhall Spa and Kirkby on Bain is dominated by gravel and sand. For much of prehistory, Lincolnshire was under tropical seas, and most fossils found in the county are marine invertebrates. Marine vertebrates have also been found including ichthyosaurus and plesiosaur.

The highest point in Lincolnshire is Wolds Top (168 m), at Normanby le Wold. Some parts of the Fens may be below sea level. The nearest mountains are in Derbyshire.

The biggest rivers in Lincolnshire are the Trent, running northwards from Staffordshire up the western edge of the county to the Humber estuary, and the Witham, which begins in Lincolnshire at South Witham and runs for 132 km through the middle of the county, eventually emptying into the North Sea at The Wash. The Humber estuary, on Lincolnshire's northern border, is also fed by the River Ouse. The Wash is also the mouth of the Welland, the Nene and the Great Ouse.

Lincolnshire's geography is fairly varied, but consists of several distinct areas:
 * Lincolnshire Wolds: area of rolling hills in the north-east of the county designated an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty
 * The Fens: dominating the south-east quarter of the county
 * The Marshes: running along the coast of the county
 * Lincoln Edge or Cliff: limestone escarpment running north–south along the western half of the county

Lincolnshire's most well-known nature reserves include Gibraltar Point National Nature Reserve, Whisby Nature Park Local Nature Reserve, Donna Nook National Nature Reserve, RSPB Frampton Marsh and the Humberhead Peatlands National Nature Reserve. Although the Lincolnshire countryside is intensively farmed, there are many biodiverse wetland areas, as well as rare limewood forests. Much of the county was once wet fenland (see The Fens).

From bones, we can tell that animal species formerly found in Lincolnshire include woolly mammoth, woolly rhinoceros, wild horse, wolf, wild boar and beaver. Species which have recently returned to Lincolnshire after extirpation include little egret, Eurasian spoonbill, European otter and red kite.

Local government history
The Local Government Act 1888 established county councils for each of the parts of Lincolnshire – Lindsey, Holland and Kesteven – and came into effect on 1 April 1889. Lincoln was made an independent county borough on the same date, with Grimsby following in 1891.

The Local Government Act 1972 abolished the three county councils and the two county boroughs, effective 1 April 1974. On this date, Grimsby and the northern part of Lindsey (including Scunthorpe) were amalgamated with most of the East Riding of Yorkshire and a part of the West Riding of Yorkshire to form the new non-metropolitan county of Humberside. The rest of Lindsey, along with Holland, Kesteven and Lincoln, came under the governance of the new Lincolnshire County Council.

A local government reform in 1996 abolished Humberside. The land south of the Humber Estuary was allocated to the unitary authorities of North Lincolnshire and North East Lincolnshire which became part of Lincolnshire for ceremonial purposes, such as the Lord-Lieutenancy, but are not covered by the Lincolnshire police; they are in the Yorkshire and the Humber region. The remaining districts of Lincolnshire are Boston, East Lindsey, Lincoln, North Kesteven, South Holland, South Kesteven, and West Lindsey. They are part of the East Midlands region.

North East Lincolnshire and North Lincolnshire are unitary authorities. They were districts of Humberside county from 1974. In 1996, Humberside was abolished along with its county council. Some services in those districts are shared with the East Riding of Yorkshire ceremonial county, rather than the rest of Lincolnshire including Humberside Police, Humberside Airport, Humberside Fire Service, and BBC Radio Humberside.

Current governance
Since the 2024 general election and the constituency reorganisation by the 2023 Periodic Review, Lincolnshire is represented by ten Members of Parliament (MPs) whose constituencies fall entirely within the county. Small areas of Lincolnshire form constituencies with parts of neighbouring counties, namely the Isle of Axholme (part of Doncaster East and the Isle of Axholme) and the town of Stamford and its surroundings (part of Rutland and Stamford). Of the ten constituencies entirely within Lincolnshire, six are represented by the Conservative Party, three by the Labour Party and one by Reform UK.

Lincolnshire County Council is majority controlled by the Conservative Party, and consists of 54 Conservative councillors, four Labour, four South Holland Independents, four independents, three Liberal Democrats and one Lincolnshire Independent. The county is made up of seven local borough and district councils and two unitary authority areas independent of the county council. The City of Lincoln Council is Labour-controlled. North Kesteven, South Holland and East Lindsey are administered by the Conservatives. South Kesteven is controlled by a coalition of independent, Labour Party, Green Party and Liberal Democrat councillors. West Lindsey is controlled by a coalition of Liberal Democrats and independents. The Borough of Boston is controlled by the local Boston Independent party. The unitary authority North Lincolnshire and North East Lincolnshire councils are administered by the Conservative Party.

Demography
The following tables show the ethnic and religious composition of Lincolnshire in 2021:

Economy

 * includes hunting and forestry
 * includes energy and construction
 * includes financial intermediation services indirectly measured

Notable businesses based in Lincolnshire include the Lincs FM Group, Young's Seafood, Openfield and the Lincolnshire Co-operative (whose membership includes about one quarter of the population of the county).

Agriculture
Lincolnshire has long been a primarily agricultural area, and it continues to grow large amounts of wheat, barley, sugar beet, and oilseed rape. In south Lincolnshire, where the soil is particularly rich in nutrients, some of the most common crops include potatoes, cabbages, cauliflowers, and onions. Lincolnshire farmers often break world records for crop yields. South Lincolnshire is also home to one of the UK's leading agricultural experiment stations, located in Sutton Bridge and operated by the Potato Council; Sutton Bridge Crop Storage Research engages in research for the British potato industry.

The Lincoln Longwool is a rare breed of sheep, named after the region, which was developed both for wool and mutton, at least 500 years ago, and has the longest fleece of any sheep breed. The Lincoln Red is an old breed of beef cattle, originating from the county. In the mid 20th century most farms in Lincolnshire moved away from mixed farming to specialise in arable cropping, partly due to cheap wool imports, partly to take advantage of efficiencies of scale and partly because the drier land on the eastern side of England is particularly suitable for arable cropping.

Mechanization around 1900 greatly diminished the number of workers required to operate the county's relatively large farms, and the proportion of workers in the agricultural sector dropped substantially during this period. Several major engineering companies developed in Lincoln, Gainsborough and Grantham to support those changes. Among these was Fosters of Lincoln, which built the first tank, and Richard Hornsby & Sons of Grantham. Most such industrial companies left during late 20th-century restructuring.

Today, immigrant workers, mainly from new member states of the European Union in Central and Eastern Europe, form a large component of the seasonal agricultural workforce, particularly in the south of the county. Here more labour-intensive crops are produced, such as small vegetables and cut flowers. This seasonal influx of migrant labour occasionally causes tension between the migrant workforce and local people, in a county which had been relatively unaccustomed to large-scale immigration. Agricultural training is provided at Riseholme College and in 2016 the University of Lincoln opened the Lincoln Institute for Agri-Food Technology.

Central Lincolnshire
This area covers North Kesteven, Lincoln and West Lindsey. It helps with development and economic planning around the three districts.

Services and retail
According to an Intra-governmental Group on Geographic Information (IGGI) study in 2000, the town centres were ranked by area thus (including North Lincolnshire and North East Lincolnshire areas):
 * Lincoln
 * Grantham
 * Grimsby
 * Boston and Scunthorpe (equal)
 * Spalding
 * Stamford
 * Skegness
 * Louth
 * Sleaford
 * Gainsborough
 * Brigg
 * Cleethorpes
 * Bourne
 * Horncastle and Mablethorpe (equal)

Education
Lincolnshire is one of the few counties in the UK that still uses the 11-plus to decide who may attend grammar school. As a result, many towns in Lincolnshire have both a grammar school and a secondary modern school. Lincolnshire's rural character means that some larger villages also have primary schools and are served by buses to nearby high schools.

Lincoln itself, however, is primarily non-selective, as is the area within a radius of about seven miles. In this area, almost all children attend comprehensive schools, though it is still possible to opt into the 11-plus system. This gives rise to the unusual result that those who pass the Eleven plus can attend a Grammar School outside the Lincoln Comprehensive area, but those who do not pass still attend a (partly non-selective) Comprehensive school.

Health care
The United Lincolnshire Hospitals NHS Trust is one of the largest trusts in the country, employing almost 4,000 staff and with an annual budget of over £200 million. The north of the county is served by the Northern Lincolnshire and Goole Hospital NHS Foundation Trust.

Some of the larger hospitals in the county include:

 * Diana Princess of Wales Hospital, Grimsby
 * Scunthorpe General Hospital
 * Boston Pilgrim Hospital
 * Lincoln County Hospital

Since April 1994, Lincolnshire has had an Air Ambulance service. The air ambulance is stationed at RAF Waddington near Lincoln and can reach emergencies in Lincolnshire within 25 minutes. An A&E hospital is only 10 minutes away by helicopter from any accident in Lincolnshire.

Drainage
Separately to the commercial water companies the low-lying parts of the county are drained by various internal drainage boards, such as the Black Sluice Internal Drainage Board,Witham 4th District IDB, Lindsey Marsh Drainage Board, or the Welland and Deepings Internal Drainage Board.

Transport
Being on the economic periphery of England, Lincolnshire's transport links are poorly developed compared with many other parts of the United Kingdom. The road network in the county is dominated by single carriageway A roads and local roads (B roads) as opposed to motorways and dual carriageways – the administrative county of Lincolnshire is one of the few UK counties without a motorway, and until several years ago, it was said that there was only about 35 km of dual carriageway in the whole of Lincolnshire. The M180 motorway passes through North Lincolnshire, splitting into two dual carriageway trunk roads to the Humber Bridge and Grimsby, and the A46 is now dual carriageway between Newark-on-Trent and Lincoln.

The low population density of the county means that the number of railway stations and train services is very low considering the county's large area. Many of the county's railway stations were permanently closed following the Beeching Report of 1963. The most notable reopening has been the line and two stations between Lincoln and Sleaford, which reopened within months of the Beeching closure. Most other closed lines in the county were lifted long ago and much of the trackbed has returned to agricultural use.

Prior to 1970, a through train service operated between Cleethorpes and London King's Cross via Louth, Boston and Peterborough. The part of this line in Grimsby is now the A16 road, preventing reinstatement as a railway line, and a small section of the line is now the Lincolnshire Wolds Railway, with an extension towards Louth in progress.

A daily through train service operated between Cleethorpes and London King's Cross via Grimsby, Market Rasen and Lincoln Central until the late 1980s. The Humberlincs Executive, as the service was known, was operated by an InterCity 125, but was discontinued following the electrification of the East Coast Main Line. Passengers now have to change trains at Newark North Gate when travelling to and from London. However, the East Coast Main Line passes through the western edge of the county and one can catch direct trains to London from Grantham.

Most rail services are currently operated by East Midlands Railway and Northern Trains. London North Eastern Railway (LNER) and CrossCountry have services which pass through the county, with LNER trains frequently passing and stopping at Grantham on the East Coast Main Line and a service every other hour to Lincoln, while CrossCountry trains stop at Stamford on their way between Birmingham and Stansted Airport. Stations along the Humber are served by TransPennine Express services between Manchester Airport and Cleethorpes. One of the most infrequent services in the UK is in Lincolnshire: the Sheffield-Gainsborough Central-Cleethorpes line has passenger trains only on a Saturday, with three trains in both directions. This line is, however, used for freight.

On 22 May 2011, East Coast started a Lincoln-London service, initially one train a day each way, and there is a northbound service on a Sunday. This was increased in 2019 to a service every two hours. East Midlands Railway also run a daily (Mon-Sat) service each way between Lincoln and London St Pancras, though this is a stopping service which takes around three hours via Nottingham, compared to LNER's service to London King's Cross which takes around 1 hour 50 minutes.

The only airport in Lincolnshire is Humberside Airport, near Brigg. East Midlands Airport, the main airport servicing the East Midlands, is within travelling distance of the county. Until its closure in 2022, Doncaster Sheffield Airport near Doncaster was within travelling distance of much of Lincolnshire.

The county's biggest bus companies are Stagecoach Grimsby-Cleethorpes (formerly Grimsby-Cleethorpes Transport) and Stagecoach in Lincolnshire (formerly Lincolnshire Road Car). There are several smaller bus companies, including Brylaine of Boston, Delaine Buses and Hornsby's of Scunthorpe.

A Sustrans cycle route runs from Lincoln to Boston in the south of the county.

Towns and villages
In terms of population, the 12 biggest settlements in the county by population are:

 * Lincoln (Population: 104,565)
 * Grimsby (Population: 85,911)
 * Scunthorpe (Population: 81,286)
 * Boston (Population: 45,339)
 * Grantham (Population: 44,898)
 * Spalding (Population: 30,556)
 * Cleethorpes (Population: 29,678)
 * Gainsborough (Population: 21,908)
 * Stamford (Population: 20,742)
 * Skegness (Population: 20,704)
 * Sleaford (Population: 18,033)
 * Bourne (Population, 17,490)

A small part of the Thorne Waste area of the town of Thorne in South Yorkshire, known as the Yorkshire Triangle, currently falls under North Lincolnshire.

Tourism
The majority of tourism in Lincolnshire relies on the coastal resorts and towns to the east of the Lincolnshire Wolds. The county has some of the best-known seaside resorts in the United Kingdom, which are a major attraction to visitors from across England, especially the East Midlands and parts of Yorkshire. There are three main coastal resorts in Lincolnshire and several smaller village resorts. The main county seaside resort of Skegness with its famous Jolly Fisherman mascot and famous slogan "Skegness is so bracing", together with its neighbouring large village coastal resorts of Ingoldmells and Chapel St Leonards, provides the biggest concentration of resorts along the Lincolnshire Coast, with many large caravan and holiday sites. The resort offers many amusements, beaches, leisure activities and shops, as well as Butlins Skegness, Fantasy Island, Church Farm Museum, Natureland Seal Sanctuary, Skegness Stadium, Skegness Pier and several well-known local golf courses. There are good road, bus and rail links to the rest of the county.

The second largest group of resorts along the coast is the seaside town of Mablethorpe, famous for its golden sands, and the neighbouring village resorts of Trusthorpe and Sutton-on-Sea. This area also offers leisure activities and has large caravan and holiday sites. But the area is less developed, with fewer amusement arcades and nightclubs, and poorer road links to the rest of the county; but the area offers a more traditional seaside setting.

The third group of resorts includes the seaside town of Cleethorpes and the large village resort of Humberston within North East Lincolnshire. It has the Cleethorpes Coast Light Railway and Cleethorpes Pier along with its local golf courses and caravan and holiday sites, whilst it is also the former site of Pleasure Island Family Theme Park. Cleethorpes is well-served by road and rail; it is easily accessible from the M180 and the TransPennine Express route to Manchester.

Nature is an attraction for many tourists: the south-east of the county is mainly fenland that attracts many species of birds, as do the national nature reserves at Gibraltar Point, Saltfleetby-Theddlethorpe and Donna Nook, which also contains a large grey seal colony which is popular with visitors.

The market towns of the Lincolnshire Wolds Louth, Alford, Horncastle, Caistor and Spilsby are also attractive, with several having historically important buildings, such as Alford Manor House, St James' Church and Bolingbroke Castle. The Wolds are popular for cycling and walking, with regular events such as the Lincolnshire Wolds Walking Festival.

The city of Lincoln is home to many tourist attractions including Lincoln Castle, Lincoln Cathedral, The Engine Shed, Steep Hill, International Bomber Command Centre and Guildhall and Stonebow among other historical landmarks and listed buildings. The city acts as one of the many tourist centres in the East Midlands Region.

Culture
Lincolnshire has a rustic culture. Due to the large distances between the towns, many villages have remained very self-contained, with many still having shops, pubs, local halls and local chapels and churches, offering a variety of social activities for residents. Fishing (in the extensive river and drainage system in the fens) and shooting are popular activities. A lot of the culture in Lincoln itself is based upon its history. The Collection is an archaeological museum and art gallery in Lincoln. Lincoln Cathedral also plays a large part in Lincoln's culture, playing host to many events throughout the year, from concert recitals to indoor food markets.

A Lincolnshire tradition was that front doors were used for only three things: a new baby, a bride, and a coffin.

People
Those born in Lincolnshire are sometimes given the nickname of Yellowbellies (often spelt "Yeller Bellies", to reflect the pronunciation of the phrase by the typical Lincolnshire farmer). The origin of this term is debated, but is most commonly believed to derive from the uniform of the 10th Regiment of Foot (later the Lincolnshire Regiment) which featured yellow facings. For this reason, the coat of arms of Lincolnshire County Council is supported by two officers of the regiment.

Local dialect
In common with most other Northern and Midlands dialects in England, "flat" a is preferred, i.e. over, and also traditionally in words like 'water', pronounced  watter (though such a pronunciation is rarely heard nowadays). Similarly, is usually replaced by. Features rather more confined to Lincolnshire include:
 * Elaboration of Received Pronunciation English or  into a complex triphthong approximating, and often transcribed -air- or -yair-. For example: 'mate' ; 'beast' ; tates (potatoes).
 * An equivalent elaboration of standard English – commonly  in Northern England – into -ooa-. For example, 'boat'.
 * Insertion of an extra schwa into the standard English diphthong.
 * Vocabulary: 'duck' as a term of endearment or informal address, 'mardy' meaning upset or angry, mowt (pronounced like 'mout') for 'might', while as a substitute for standard English 'until', frit meaning frightened, grufty meaning dirty or disgusting, and the inimitable salutation now then!? (hello), sometimes written nairn to reflect pronunciation.
 * In the north-east of the county, around Grimsby and Immingham, the nurse-square merger can be heard, as is also the case along the east coast of Yorkshire and also in Liverpool. Words that take in RP take  in these areas.

Lincolnshire has its own dialect "champion", a farmer from the village of Minting called Farmer Wink (real name Robert Carlton), who has produced videos about rural life, narrated in his broad Lincolnshire accent. A resident of Woodhall Spa has published a dictionary of words once prevalent in parts of the county.

Music
"The Lincolnshire Poacher", a folksong, is the country's best-known melody and almost its unofficial anthem. It describes the delights of nocturnal poaching. It was the regimental quick march of the 10th Regiment of Foot and its successors the Royal Lincolnshire Regiment and the 2nd Battalion Royal Anglian Regiment, who are known as "the Poachers".

Lincolnshire was historically associated with the Lincolnshire bagpipes, instruments derided as coarse and unpleasant in contemporary literature, but noted as very popular in the county. The last player, John Hunsley of Middle Manton, died in 1851, and since then the instrument has been extinct.

The Australian composer Percy Grainger made what are thought to be the first recordings of British Folksongs between 1906 and 1908 in Lincolnshire using a wax Phonograph Cylinder. These are now housed in the British Library. They included songs sung by Joseph Taylor of Saxby-All-Saints who became the first folk singer to be commercially recorded and whose rendition of Brigg Fair inspired classical works by Grainger and Frederick Delius. In 1937, Grainger wrote his Lincolnshire Posy for wind band. The piece is a compilation of folk songs ("bunch of wildflowers") collected by the composer in and around the county of Lincolnshire. Ralph Vaughan Williams was a frequent guest at Gunby Hall and the manuscript of his collected folksong "Daffodils" is in their collection.

A number of composers have lived and worked in the county. William Byrd was organist and master of the choristers at Lincoln Cathedral from 1563 to 1572. John Taverner was listed as a lay clerk at Tattershall Collegiate Church in 1525 and also sang at St Botolph's Church, Boston under whose famous "stump" he is presumed to be buried. Thomas Linley, composer, a friend of Mozart, drowned in the lake at Grimsthorpe Castle near Bourne in 1778. Nicholas Maw was born in Grantham and Peter Seabourne lives in East Kirkby.

Food
Lincolnshire has a number of local dishes: Craft Chocolatiers can be found throughout  the county, such as Hansens in Folkingham. In 2013 Redstar Chocolate's Duffy's Venezuela Ocumare Milk won a gold medal as best bean-to-bar. The factory is in Cleethorpes.
 * Stuffed chine – this is salted neck-chine of a pig taken from between the shoulder blades, salted for up to ten months and stuffed with parsley (other ingredients are normally kept secret), and served cold.
 * Haslet – a type of pork loaf, also flavoured with sage (pronounced HAYSS-let or AYSS-let in Lincolnshire but HAZ-let in many other parts of the country).
 * Lincolnshire sausages – most butchers in Lincolnshire have their own secret recipe for these and a competition is held each year to judge the best sausages in the county. Traditional Lincolnshire sausages are made entirely from minced pork, stale bread crumb (rusk is used nowadays) pepper, sage and salt. The skins should be natural casings which are made from the intestines of either sheep or pig.
 * Pork pies – the same pork butchers will take a pride in their unique recipe for pork pies.
 * Giblet pie.
 * Mutton stuffed with oysters.
 * Plum bread – as with plum pudding, plum refers to dried fruit, namely currants, raisins and sultanas, sometimes soaked in tea.
 * Grantham Gingerbread – a hard white ginger biscuit.
 * Lincolnshire Poacher cheese – a cheddar-style cheese produced in Alford. Lincolnshire Poacher has won numerous awards over the years including Supreme Champion at the 1996/7 British Cheese Awards and Best British Cheese at the World Cheese awards in 2001/2.
 * Batemans ales – a beer brewed in Wainfleet and served in many pubs in the county and further afield.
 * There are several small breweries.
 * Grimsby is renowned for its fishing industry, and historically Grimsby Fish has carried a premium price. Since the decline of the fishing industry following entry to the European Economic Community in the 1970s this is no longer the case, with the majority of fish sold at the town's fish market being brought overland from other ports. However, Grimsby Fish is still a recognised product, one associated with a particular area that specialises in and has expertise in a particular trade (cf Sheffield steel). In 2009 smoked fish from the town was granted Protected Geographical Indication by the European Union, reflecting the unique smoking methods used by certain local fish companies.

Events
Every year the Lincolnshire Agricultural Society, founded in 1869, stages the Lincolnshire Agricultural Show. It is held on the Wednesday and Thursday of the last whole week of June at its showground at Grange de Lings, a few miles north of Lincoln on the A15. The show was first held here in 1958. First held around the year 1884, it is one of the largest agricultural shows in the country, and is attended by around 100,000 people over its two days. The showground is in regular use throughout the year for a wide range of other events and functions.

Smaller local agricultural shows, such as the Heckington Show can still be found. Corby Glen sheep fair has been held since 1238.

Each year RAF Waddington is the home to the RAF International Waddington Air Show. The two-day event attracts around 150,000 people and usually takes place during the first weekend of July. Since its inception over 35 countries have participated, with aircraft from around the globe attending the Lincolnshire Base. Beginning 2017, the event will be held at nearby RAF Scampton.

On the Monday before Easter, an unusual auction takes place in Bourne to let the grazing rights of the Whitebread Meadow. Bidding takes place while two boys race toward the Queen's Bridge in Eastgate, the end of which dash is equivalent to the falling of the gavel. The whole affair dates back to the 1742 will of William Clay.

The Haxey Hood village competition takes place every January, as it has for over 700 years.

Stamford's Mid-Lent fair sees showmen converge on the town the week after Mothering Sunday, with rides and sideshows filling Broad Street, the Sheepmarket and the Meadows for a week. Stalls selling Grantham gingerbread and nougat are a traditional feature. The following week sees them in Grantham, on the way north for the Summer. Roger Tuby brings a small funfair to Bourne and then to Spalding in Spring and returns in Autumn at the end of the season.

The villages of Tetford and Salmonby hold an annual Scarecrow Festival in May every year.

The Belchford Downhill Challenge which is held every two years: soapbox racers race down the hill at up to 30 km/h. The turnout has been up to 1,000.

Lincoln Christmas Market, was a street market held throughout the historic area of the city at the start of December, it was one of the largest Christmas markets in Europe, attracting over 250,000 people over the four-day event. Around the same time, Christmas lights are turned on in Bourne, Sleaford, Skegness, and other towns.

Throughout the summer the Stamford Shakespeare Company presents the Bard's plays in the open-air theatre at Tolethorpe Hall, which is actually in Rutland.

The Spalding Flower Parade was held in late spring every year between 1959 and 2013. Colourful floats decorated with tulip heads competed for a cup.

Sport
The main sports played in the county are football, cricket and rugby union. Lincolnshire does not have a high sporting profile, mainly due to the lack of facilities and high-profile football teams. Probably the most well-known sporting venues in Lincolnshire are Cadwell Park near Louth, where a round of the British Motorbike Championship is held on the last Monday of August every year and the racecourse at Market Rasen

 * Two teams from Lincolnshire play in the Football League: Lincoln City play in League One and Grimsby Town play in League Two. In non-league football Scunthorpe United and Boston United play in the National League North, and Gainsborough Trinity play in the Northern Premier League. A meeting between any of these clubs is a Lincolnshire derby; the most prominent meeting, having happened across four of the top five tiers of English football, is Lincoln City vs Grimsby Town.
 * In cricket Lincolnshire are a minor county and play in the Minor Counties Championship.
 * In hockey Lindum Hockey Club play in the north of Lincoln.
 * Scunthorpe Rugby Club are the most notable rugby union team from Lincolnshire, and will play in the fifth level of the English league system in the 2017–18 season. Other notable teams include Market Rasen and Louth RUFC, Lincoln RFC, and Boston RFC.
 * Lincolnshire is home to one racecourse, at Market Rasen.
 * Cadwell Park is the only motor-racing course in Lincolnshire. There is a speedway track in Scunthorpe, home of the Scunthorpe Scorpions, and stock-car racing at a stadium at Orby, near Skegness.
 * Lincolnshire has an American Football club, the Lincolnshire Bombers, which has existed in its current guise since 2005.
 * Lincolnshire is home to the UK roller derby team, the Lincolnshire Bombers Roller Girls, which is sponsored by Motörhead.
 * Lincolnshire is home to Lincolnshire Lions Rugby League who run an Open Age Men's team, playing in the Midlands Merit League since 2022.

Symbols
The unofficial anthem of the county is the traditional folk song, "The Lincolnshire Poacher", which dates from around 1776. A version of the song was the theme for BBC Radio Lincolnshire for many years.

According to a 2002 marketing campaign by the charity Plantlife, the county flower of Lincolnshire is the common dog-violet.

In August 2005, BBC Radio Lincolnshire and Lincolnshire Life magazine launched a vote for a flag of Lincolnshire to represent the county. Six competing designs were voted upon by locals and the winning submission was unveiled in October 2005. Lincoln has its own flag – St George's flag with a Fleur-de-Lys.

The Lincoln Imp has symbolised cathedral, city and county for many years. In 2006 it was replaced as the brand of Lincolnshire County Council by the stylised version seen on the header here which has lost even the unique pose of the carving.

Press
The county is home to one daily newspaper, the Grimsby Telegraph which as the name suggests, is published in the town and whose circulation area ostensibly covers North East Lincolnshire, although it reaches as far south as Louth and Alford and as west as Brigg.

There are two further weekly papers which used to be published daily until 2011; the Lincolnshire Echo is published weekly from Lincoln and covers the majority of the county reaching as far north as Louth, and the Scunthorpe Telegraph which covers northern Lincolnshire. All three are ultimately owned by Reach plc.

There are also a number of weekly papers serving individual towns published in the county by Iliffe Media. One of these, the Stamford Mercury, claims to be Britain's oldest newspaper, although it is now a typical local weekly and no longer covers stories from the whole East Midlands as the archived copies did.

Television
With the exception of a small area to the south-west of the county, Lincolnshire is served from the Belmont transmitter, receiving programmes from ITV Yorkshire and BBC One Yorkshire and Lincolnshire regions.

The BBC has, since 2003, provided the area with its twelfth regional service: BBC Yorkshire and Lincolnshire, carrying a local "Look North" news programme from the main studio in Hull, with input from other studios in Lincoln and Grimsby.

ITV Yorkshire provides coverage through its evening news programme "Calendar". Until late 2008 the station provided a separate edition for the Belmont transmitter (although it was still broadcast from Leeds). From January 2009 the area is now covered by a programme that covers the entire ITV Yorkshire region.

From 1959 to July 1974 ITV programmes were provided by Anglia Television (although some coverage could be received from the Manchester-based Granada and ABC Weekend). Based in Norwich the company had news offices in Grimsby. Following a transmitter change ITV services were provided by Yorkshire Television. This company kept open the offices in Grimsby and opened further facilities in Lincoln, although both of these closed in the mid-1990s.

South-west Lincolnshire receives BBC East Midlands and ITV Central which are broadcast from the Waltham-on-the-Wolds Transmitting Station. Although subject to co-channel interference from the Waltham transmitter, a small number of households in the southern tip of the county are able to receive regional programming from BBC East and ITV Anglia.

Many villages just west of the Lincoln Edge cannot get a signal from Belmont due to shadowing and instead get their TV from Emley Moor near Huddersfield.

Radio
The area is covered by several local radio stations including:

BBC Local Radio

 * BBC Radio Lincolnshire Can be heard throughout historic Lincolnshire although its broadcast remit is the present county of Lincolnshire
 * BBC Radio Humberside The counties of northern Lincolnshire that were formerly known as South Humberside
 * BBC Radio Cambridgeshire can be heard in southern parts of Lincolnshire

Independent Local Radio

 * Greatest Hits Radio Lincolnshire Historic Lincolnshire
 * Greatest Hits Radio Peterborough, Stamford and Rutland Stamford
 * Heart East Peterborough and South Lincolnshire
 * Hits Radio East Yorkshire & North Lincolnshire Northern Lincolnshire and East Yorkshire, formerly the constituent areas of Humberside
 * Hits Radio Lincolnshire Historic Lincolnshire

Community radio

 * Siren Radio Lincoln
 * Endeavour Radio Boston
 * TMCR 95.3 (covering Epworth and Isle of Axholme)
 * Tulip Radio Spalding and South Holland (Closed)

Air
Because of its flat geography and low population density, Lincolnshire is an ideal place for airfields, and the Air Ministry built prolifically with the county hosting nearly seventy separate air bases. It became known as "bomber county". Since the end of the Second World War most of these airfields or stations were decommissioned, but the RAF retains a significant footprint in Lincolnshire for the air defence of the United Kingdom and aircrew training. For more information on former bases, see List of former RAF stations.

Two major front-line bases located in Lincolnshire are RAF Coningsby, which is one of only two RAF Quick Reaction Alert (QRA) Stations in the United Kingdom and home to the Eurofighter Typhoon jet fighters, and RAF Waddington, where most of the RAF's Intelligence, Surveillance, Target Acquisition and Reconnaissance aircraft are based. The Red Arrows Aerobatic Team has also been based at Waddington since October 2022 after their previous base, RAF Scampton, was closed down. Other stations in Lincolnshire include RAF Cranwell, home to all Air Force Basic Officer Training for the Royal Air Force; RAF Barkston Heath, a training airfield; and minor bases such as RAF Donna Nook and RAF Digby.

Lincolnshire is also home to two active RAF and NATO-allied air weapons training bombing ranges, located along The Wash and north Lincolnshire coastline—RAF Holbeach active since 1926 (originally part of the former RAF Sutton Bridge station) and Donna Nook. The RAF Wainfleet range was decommissioned in 2010.

Army
The Army runs Sobraon Barracks, home of 160 (Lincoln) Squadron, Royal Logistic Corps (RLC), as well as Prince William of Gloucester Barracks, Grantham, home to the national specialist logistics units. In November 2016 the Ministry of Defence announced that the Grantham site would close in 2020 but the timescale has twice been extended, latterly to 2028.

title: Lincolnshire


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Niels Bohr Institute

The Niels Bohr Institute (Niels Bohr Institutet) is a research institute of the University of Copenhagen. The research of the institute spans astronomy, geophysics, nanotechnology, particle physics, quantum mechanics, and biophysics.

Overview
The institute was founded in 1921, as the Institute for Theoretical Physics of the University of Copenhagen, by the Danish theoretical physicist Niels Bohr, who had been on the staff of the University of Copenhagen since 1914, and who had been lobbying for its creation since his appointment as professor in 1916. On the 80th anniversary of Niels Bohr's birth – October 7, 1965 – the Institute officially became the Niels Bohr Institute. Much of its original funding came from the charitable foundation of the Carlsberg brewery, and later from the Rockefeller Foundation.

During the 1920s, and 1930s, the institute was the center of the developing disciplines of atomic physics and quantum physics. Physicists from across Europe (and sometimes further abroad) often visited the institute to confer with Bohr on new theories and discoveries. The Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics is named after work done at the institute during this time.

Following his father's death in 1962, Aage Bohr succeeded him as director of the Niels Bohr Institute, a position he held until 1970. He remained active there until he retired in 1992.

On January 1, 1993, the institute was merged with the Astronomic Observatory, the Ørsted Laboratory and the Geophysical Institute. The new resulting institute retained the name Niels Bohr Institute.

Research sections
The research at the Niels Bohr Institute spans Astronomy, Geophysics, Nanophysics, Particles Physics, Quantum Physics and Biophysics.

Research at the institute is based on observations, fieldwork, laboratory experiments and theoretical models for the purpose of understanding basic laws and complex truths on this world. The Institute has a broad network of scientific cooperation, and a lively exchange of collaborators and guests with leading international research groups.

Astrophysics
A broad spectrum of astronomy and astrophysics is researched at the Niels Bohr Institute – everything from the visible Universe such as planets, stars and galaxies – to the invisible universe and the presence of dark energy and dark matter.

The NBI astrophysicists participate in many international projects and have access to modern telescopes and satellites via, e.g. Denmark’s membership of the European Southern Observatory (ESO) and the European Space Agency (ESA), and to state-of-the-art supercomputers.

Biocomplexity and Biophysics
Biocomplexity is a cutting-edge area of research between physics and biology. By using the principles and methods of physics one can explore the living nature and biological phenomena.

Researchers at BioComplexity continuously explore the diversity of complex phenomena in biological, physical and social systems, including pattern formation, complex and chaotic dynamics, fluid dynamics, game theory, networks and econophysics.

Physics approaches are used to suggest and perform experiments and models of living systems. The systems range from proteins and gene regulation to larger-scale collective spatiotemporal structure formation. The research at the institute is often performed as a collaboration between physicists, biologists, medical doctors, and nanoscientists.

Condensed Matter Physics
Condensed matter physics is concerned with the understanding of the physical properties of solids and liquids, both naturally occurring and artificially produced.

Condensed matter physics is the foundation for many every-day technologies, ranging from hardening of steel to integrated microchips. Modern research in condensed matter physics takes place in both large scale x-ray and neutron scattering facilities, as well as in locally based laboratories, where quantum phenomena are being explored at temperatures near absolute zero. There is a vivid exchange between condensed matter and neighboring research areas, including biophysics, nanoscience, chemistry, optics, and quantum information.

Experimental Particle Physics
How was the universe created, which inflation scenario played out in the first split second, what happened during the quark-gluon plasma era? What is the source of the mass spectrum of fundamental particles of matter and forces? These are some of the questions particle physicists are looking for answers to.

The Particle Physicists work with the build up of matter in the early universe. They are searching for an explanation as to what the universe's smallest components were composed of in the first milliseconds after the Big Bang 14 billion years ago and what forces held them together.

Physics of Ice, Climate and Earth
The section for the Physics of Ice, Climate and Earth at the Niels Bohr Institute studies the elements of the Earth and climate system – the atmosphere, oceans, ice sheets and glaciers, sea ice, and the solid Earth itself – and the interactions between them.

Quantum Optics and Photonics
The Quantum Optics section conducts experimental and theoretical research in Quantum Optics, in particular, in Quantum Information Processing, Quantum Sensors, and Quantum Technologies.

We use photons, from optics to microwaves interacting with a wide variety of quantum matter, such as quantum dots, single atoms, atomic ensembles and mechanical oscillators.

The overarching theme is generation and manipulation of non-classical entangled states for quantum simulation, sensing and communication. The research directions span from fundamental research to device engineering.

Theoretical high energy, astroparticle and gravitational physics
The Theoretical high energy, astroparticle and gravitational physics at the Niels Bohr Institute is involved in a wide scope of research activities centered around quantum theories of gauge fields, gravity and astrophysics.

Research areas include scattering amplitudes, effective field theory, black holes, holography, lattice simulations, quantum gravity, integrability, astroparticle physics, and cosmology.

Cosmic Dawn

The Cosmic Dawn Center is an Astronomy/Cosmology research center, founded as a collaboration between the University of Copenhagen and DTU Space of the Danish Technical University (DTU). The center is led by center director and NBI Professor Sune Toft and center co-director Thomas Greve, Professor at DTU and UCL. The main objective of the center is to investigate the period known as the Cosmic Dawn (the transition period following the Cosmic Dark Ages), i.e. the reionization of the Universe and the formation of the first galaxies, through observations as well as through theory and simulations.

Goals
Research conducted at the center is focused on the specific period in the history of the Universe known as the Cosmic Dawn. This largely unexplored period, 300-600 million years after the Big Bang is when the first stars, black holes, and galaxies are believed to have formed. Many of the observations used by the center originate from the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA), one of the more powerful telescopes in the world. In the future, the center aims to mainly use the James Webb Space Telescope and the Euclid Telescope of the European Space Agency (ESA). DAWN scientists were instrumental in the construction of three instruments (NIRSpec, MIRI and NIRISS) for the project, and will be involved in the analysis of the first data from the telescope.

Published research
As of April 18, 2020, DAWN authors have published at least 187 refereed papers garnering 1602 citations, which, among others, can be found at the NASA/ADS library.
 * Observation of inverse Compton emission from a long γ-ray burst:
 * Identification of strontium in the merger of two neutron stars:
 * Signatures of a jet cocoon in early spectra of a supernova associated with a γ-ray burst:
 * Stellar Velocity Dispersion of a Massive Quenching Galaxy at z = 4.01:

Medal of Honour

in 2010, the year of the 125th anniversary of the birth of Niels Bohr, the institute established the Niels Bohr Institute Medal of Honour. It is an annual award for "a particularly outstanding researcher who is working in the spirit of Niels Bohr: International cooperation and the exchange of knowledge".

The medal is made by Danish sculptor Rikke Raben for the Niels Bohr Institute. On the front is a portrait of Niels Bohr, the atom sign and stars. The illustration on the back is inspired by a quote from Bohr: ''What is it that we human beings ultimately depend on? We depend on our words. We are suspended in language. Our task is to communicate experience and ideas to others''. On the back of the medal: Unity of Knowledge – the title of a lecture given by Bohr at Columbia University in 1954. Nosce te ipsum is Latin and means "know thyself". This quote originates from the Oracle of Delphi, in the Temple of Apollo in Greece.

Recipients:
 * 2010: Leo Kadanoff
 * 2011: Andre Geim
 * 2012: Juan Ignacio Cirac Sasturain
 * 2013: Fabiola Gianotti
 * 2014: Glaciologist Jérôme Chappellaz
 * 2015: Astrophysicist Brian Schmidt
 * 2016: Gerard 't Hooft
 * 2017: Jürgen Schukraft
 * 2019: David R. Nelson
 * 2020: Paul J. Steinhardt
 * 2021: Jun Ye

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Niels Bohr Institute


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DESY

DESY, short for Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron (English: German Electron Synchrotron), is a national research centre for fundamental science located in Hamburg and Zeuthen near Berlin in Germany. It operates particle accelerators used to investigate the structure, dynamics and function of matter, and conducts a broad spectrum of interdisciplinary scientific research in four main areas: particle and high energy physics; photon science; astroparticle physics; and the development, construction and operation of particle accelerators. Its name refers to its first project, an electron synchrotron. DESY is publicly financed by the Federal Republic of Germany and the Federal States of Hamburg and Brandenburg and is a member of the Helmholtz Association.

Functions and mission
DESY's function is to conduct fundamental research for solely civil and peaceful purposes. It specialises in particle accelerator development, construction and operation, particle physics, astroparticle physics and photon science research to explore the fundamental relationships between the structure, dynamics and function of matter. In cooperation with its partner organisations, its photon science research spans surface physics, material science, chemistry, molecular biology, geophysics and medicine through the use of synchrotron radiation and free-electron lasers.

In addition to operating its own large accelerator facilities, DESY participates in many major international research projects, for example the European X-Ray Free-Electron Laser in Germany, the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland, the Belle II experiment in Japan, the IceCube Neutrino Observatory at the South Pole and the worldwide Cherenkov Telescope Array.

Sites

DESY operates in two locations. The primary location is in the Bahrenfeld quarter of Hamburg. In 1992, DESY expanded to a second site in Zeuthen near Berlin.

Hamburg
The DESY Hamburg site is located in the quarter Bahrenfeld, in the west of the city in the district of Altona. Its main accelerators are located here.

Zeuthen
Following German reunification, DESY expanded to a second site in Zeuthen near Berlin. In 1939, the German Postal Ministry founded a nuclear physics laboratory there. After World War II, the laboratory was first named "Institute X", to become the Institute for High Energy Physics (Institut für Hochenergiephysik IfH), the high-energy physics laboratory of the German Democratic Republic belonging to the Academy of Sciences of the GDR. The institute was merged with DESY on 1 January 1992. It focuses on parallel computing for theoretical particle physics, the development and construction of electron sources for X-ray lasers as well as astroparticle physics with a focus on gamma-ray and neutrino astronomy.

Employees and training
DESY employs about 3,000 staff members from more than 60 nations. Most staff work at the Hamburg site, with about 270 at the Zeuthen site. These numbers include more than 130 trainees in various industrial-technical professions and about 500 PhD students and postdocs supervised by DESY. In addition, there are numerous master students from various universities.

Budget and financing
The research centre is a foundation under civil law financed by public funds. In 2020, DESY had an annual budget of about 232 million euros (according to the German federal budget plan, excluding expenditure for investments and special financing expenses). In addition, it had a third-party funding income of about 18 million euros. 90% of the annual budget is provided by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung) and 10% respectively by the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg and the German federal state of Brandenburg.

Particle accelerators and other facilities

DESY's accelerators were not all built at once, but were rather added one by one to meet the growing demand of the scientists for higher and higher energies to gain more insight into particle structures. In the course of the construction of new accelerators, the older ones were converted to pre-accelerators or to sources for synchrotron radiation for laboratories with new research tasks.

DESY
The DESY synchrotron (short for "Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron") has been in operation since 1964. Its circumference is 300 m. It was used until 1978 for particle physics experiments and first measurements with synchrotron radiation. Since then, rebuilt and upgraded several times, it has served as a pre-accelerator and as a test beam facility delivering high-energy particle beams for testing detector systems.

DORIS
The DORIS storage ring (short for Double Ring Storage Facility) operated from 1974 to 2013. It had a circumference of 289 m. Until 1992, it collided electrons with positrons for particle physics experiments (including the ARGUS experiment). From 1980 on, the synchrotron radiation generated by DORIS was used for photon science experiments; from 1993 to 2012, the storage ring served exclusively as a synchrotron radiation source. The particle physics experiment OLYMPUS then ran in 2012 before DORIS was shut down at the beginning of 2013.

PETRA
The PETRA storage ring (short for Positron–Electron Tandem Ring Accelerator) has been in operation since 1978. It has a circumference of 2,304 m. Until 1986, electrons and positrons collided in PETRA for research in particle physics (experiments JADE, MARK-J, TASSO and PLUTO). From 1990 on, PETRA served as a pre-accelerator for the HERA storage ring, and from 1995 on also as a synchrotron radiation source with two test experimental stations. Since 2009, the facility has been delivering hard X-ray beams of very high brilliance to over 40 experimental stations under the name PETRA III.

HERA
The HERA storage ring (short for Hadron–Electron Ring Accelerator) operated from 1992 to 2007. It has a circumference of 6,336 m. It was DESY's largest ring accelerator and Germany's largest research instrument to date. Until 2007, HERA was the only storage ring facility in the world to enable collisions of electrons or positrons with protons for particle physics (experiments H1, ZEUS, HERMES and HERA-B) for studies of the inner structure of the proton.

FLASH
The free-electron laser (FEL) FLASH (short for Free-Electron Laser in Hamburg) has been in operation since 2000. It has a length of 315 m. It is based on a test facility for superconducting accelerator technology built in 1997 for the TESLA project and has served as a user facility for experiments with the generated FEL radiation since 2005. FLASH provides ultrashort light pulses in the extreme ultraviolet and soft X-ray range for seven experimental stations and is also used as a test facility for the development of accelerator and FEL technologies.

European XFEL accelerator
DESY operates the 1.7 km superconducting linear accelerator of the European XFEL X-ray free-electron laser, an international research facility that delivers ultrashort light pulses in the high-energy X-ray range.

PITZ
Since 2001, the DESY site in Zeuthen has been home to the photoinjector test facility PITZ, a linear accelerator used to study, optimise and prepare the electron sources for FLASH and (since 2015) for the European XFEL.

Other facilities
The building of the former DORIS storage ring now houses the SINBAD ("Short Innovative Bunches and Accelerators at DESY") accelerator complex with various infrastructures for accelerator R&D: the linear accelerator ARES for accelerator research with ultrashort electron pulses for medical purposes, the AXSIS facility for terahertz-driven acceleration to generate ultrashort X-ray pulses for materials science or medical imaging, and the high-power laser KALDERA for research into laser-driven plasma acceleration.

The LUX facility is also used for research into laser-driven plasma acceleration, the FLASHForward experiment at FLASH for electron-beam-driven plasma acceleration. The relativistic electron beam source REGAE generates ultrashort electron pulses for time-resolved diffraction experiments.

The tunnel of the former HERA storage ring now houses the ALPS II experiment, which uses converted superconducting dipole magnets of the HERA proton ring to study extremely light particles.

Computing
DESY provides extensive storage and computing capacity for research in all its divisions. As part of the Worldwide LHC Computing Grid (WLCG), DESY also operates a Tier-2 computer centre that offers computing and storage systems for the ATLAS, CMS and LHCb experiments at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). In addition, the DESY grid infrastructure is used by other experiments such as Belle II or IceCube.

Research areas
Research at DESY is organised into four divisions: Accelerators, Photon Science, Particle Physics and Astroparticle Physics.

The Accelerator division develops fundamental technologies for the accelerator facilities that DESY and its partners use in their scientific mission. In addition to the operation and further development of existing facilities (PETRA IV and FLASH2020+ projects, expansion of the European XFEL), essential activities include research into new accelerator concepts, in particular plasma wakefield acceleration, and the improvement of superconducting radio frequency accelerator technology.

In the Photon Science division, photons are being used to study the structure, dynamics and function of matter. To this end, the division develops, builds and operates beamlines and experiments at the DESY light sources PETRA III and FLASH. Every year, more than 3,000 researchers – most of them from universities, but also from non-university research institutions and industry – from over 40 countries conduct experiments at the light sources and in the laboratories at DESY. The research spectrum ranges from basic research to applied research and industrial collaborations in physics, chemistry, biology, medicine, life sciences, earth sciences, materials research as well as the study of cultural heritage.

The Particle Physics division is involved in the large-scale experiments at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN near Geneva. As part of the international collaborations that run the ATLAS and CMS experiments, DESY contributes to many developments at the LHC, from hardware design and data analysis to preparations for the planned upgrades. DESY also participates in the Belle II experiment at the electron–positron collider SuperKEKB at the research centre KEK in Tsukuba, Japan, as well as in developments for possible future electron–positron linear colliders. It is also active in theoretical particle physics.

The Astroparticle Physics division investigates high-energy processes in the universe. Detectors and telescopes are used to analyse neutrinos and gamma rays from space, which can provide information about cosmic phenomena: black holes, exploding stars and radiation bursts of extreme intensity. To this end, DESY is involved in the gamma telescopes MAGIC, H.E.S.S. and VERITAS as well as the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, and it contributes to the planned Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA). It is the second largest partner in the IceCube observatory at the South Pole.

History

DESY was founded on 18 December 1959 in Hamburg. According to its statutes, DESY's mission is "the promotion of basic scientific research [...] in particular through the development, construction and operation of accelerators and their scientific use, in photon science and in the fields of particle and astroparticle physics, as well as through research and development work related thereto".

From 1959 to 2007, the DESY accelerators were primarily used for particle physics, initially with the eponymous DESY electron synchrotron (1964–present), followed by DORIS (Double Ring Storage Facility, 1974–1992), PETRA (Positron–Electron Tandem Ring Facility, 1978–present) and HERA (Hadron–Electron Ring Accelerator, 1992–2007). In 1987, the ARGUS experiment at DORIS was the first to observe a large mixing of B mesons and thus a process in which matter and antimatter behave differently. The most important discovery of the experiments TASSO, JADE, MARK-J and PLUTO at PETRA was the detection of the gluon, the messenger particle of the strong force, in 1979. From 1990, PETRA served as a pre-accelerator for the even larger storage ring HERA with its four experiments H1, ZEUS, HERMES and HERA-B. HERA was the only storage ring facility in the world in which protons collided with electrons or positrons. In these collisions, the point-like electron acted like a probe, scanning the inner structure of the proton and making it visible with high resolution. HERA's precise insights into the interior of the proton formed the basis for numerous other particle physics experiments, especially at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at the research centre CERN and for numerous developments in theoretical particle physics.

In parallel, as early as the 1960s, research groups from DESY, various universities and the Max Planck Society developed the technology for using the synchrotron radiation produced by the accelerators. To meet the rapidly growing national and European demand, DESY founded its own large laboratory: the Hamburg Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory HASYLAB, which opened in 1980. It provided measuring stations at DORIS, and it was here that the Israeli biochemist Ada Yonath (Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2009) conducted experiments from 1986 to 2004 that led to her deciphering the ribosome. From 1995, both synchrotron radiation and particle physics experiments were conducted at PETRA. In 2009, the PETRA facility was upgraded for exclusive use as a synchrotron radiation source for hard X-rays (PETRA III). Today, PETRA III serves over 40 experimental stations, and there are plans to expand it into the PETRA IV 3D X-ray microscope. With the shutdown of DORIS in early 2013, the name HASYLAB was abandoned, and the use of DESY's light sources has since been carried out in its Photon Science division.

In the early 1990s, DESY began to develop a new technology: radio frequency accelerator technology based on superconducting cavities made of niobium, which are cooled to approximately 2 K (−271 °C) with liquid helium. The first accelerator on this basis was a test facility for superconducting linear accelerators at DESY to test the principle of self-amplified spontaneous emission (SASE) of X-ray laser light. The SASE theory was developed and refined at DESY and at institutes in Russia, Italy and the USA from 1980 onwards. In 2000 to 2001, the test facility at DESY was the first free-electron laser in the world to produce light flashes in the vacuum ultraviolet and soft X-ray range. Today, the FLASH facility produces ultrashort light pulses in the soft X-ray range for seven experimental stations. Since 2020, it has been expanded to further optimise the properties of the radiation (FLASH2020+ project).

From 2009 to 2016, an international consortium led by DESY developed the European X-ray free-electron laser European XFEL. The international research facility, which involves 12 European shareholder countries, is operated by the non-profit company European XFEL GmbH. The core of the facility is a 1.7 km superconducting linear accelerator. With an electron energy of 17.5 GeV, it is the most powerful superconducting linear accelerator in the world to date. DESY operates the accelerator on behalf of European XFEL GmbH.

Since 2010, DESY has been developing plasma-based accelerator technology (both laser- and electron-beam-driven) as a possible alternative to conventional accelerator technologies, with the aim of enabling compact accelerators for photon science, particle physics as well as medical and industrial applications.

Chairpersons of the DESY Directorate
DESY is headed by a Directorate consisting of the directors of the four divisions (Accelerators, Photon Science, Particle Physics and Astroparticle Physics) and the administration as well as the delegate of the Directorate for innovation. Chairpersons of the Directorate so far have been:
 * 1959 to 1970: Willibald Jentschke, Founding Director
 * 1971 to 1972: Wolfgang Paul
 * 1973 to 1980: Herwig Schopper
 * 1981 to 1993: Volker Soergel
 * 1993 to 1999: Bjørn H. Wiik
 * 1999 to early 2009: Albrecht Wagner
 * since 2 March 2009: Helmut Dosch

Joint research centres

The DESY campus in Hamburg is the location of several national and international centres in which DESY participates. These are:
 * Centre for Free-Electron Laser Science (CFEL): Investigation of ultrafast phenomena with free-electron lasers and optical lasers, studies of light–matter interaction under extreme conditions
 * Centre for Structural Systems Biology (CSSB): Structural systems biology to study infection processes at the molecular level of viruses, bacteria and parasites
 * Centre for X-ray and Nano Science (CXNS): Investigation of condensed matter with X-ray and complementary methods, high-resolution X-ray imaging, analysis of material processes

Knowledge and technology transfer

DESY aims to promote start-ups and bring know-how from fundamental research into application. It offers commercial companies support for industrial issues, e.g. through special industry access to photon sources and laboratories, develops ideas, applications and products based on fundamental research, and supports its employees in founding start-ups based on DESY technologies in the Hamburg and Brandenburg regions. DESY offers start-ups access to offices, laboratories and workshops in the DESY Innovation Village and the Start-up Labs Bahrenfeld, established together with the University of Hamburg and the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg.

title: DESY


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Brookhaven National Laboratory

Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) is a United States Department of Energy national laboratory located in Upton, Long Island, a hamlet of the Town of Brookhaven. It was formally established in 1947 at the site of Camp Upton, a former U.S. Army base. Located approximately 60 miles east of New York City, it is managed by Stony Brook University and Battelle Memorial Institute.

Research at BNL includes nuclear and high energy physics, energy science and technology, environmental and bioscience, nanoscience, and national security. The 5,300 acre campus contains several large research facilities, including the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider and National Synchrotron Light Source II. Seven Nobel Prizes have been awarded for work conducted at Brookhaven Lab.

Overview
BNL operations are overseen by a Department of Energy Site office, is staffed by approximately 2,750 scientists, engineers, technicians, and support personnel, and hosts 4,000 guest investigators every year. The laboratory is guarded by a Department of Energy Protective Force, has a full service fire department, and has its own ZIP code (11973). In total, the lab spans a 5265 acre area that is mostly coterminous with the hamlet of Upton, New York. BNL is served by a rail spur operated as-needed by the New York and Atlantic Railway. Co-located with the laboratory is the Upton, New York, forecast office of the National Weather Service.

Major programs
Although originally conceived as a nuclear research facility, Brookhaven Lab's mission has greatly expanded. Its foci are now:
 * Nuclear and high-energy physics
 * Physics and chemistry of materials
 * Environmental and climate research
 * Nanomaterials
 * Energy research
 * Nonproliferation
 * Structural biology
 * Accelerator physics

Operation
Brookhaven National Lab was originally owned by the Atomic Energy Commission and is now owned by that agency's successor, the United States Department of Energy (DOE). DOE subcontracts the research and operation to universities and research organizations. It is currently operated by Brookhaven Science Associates LLC, which is an equal partnership of Stony Brook University and Battelle Memorial Institute. From 1947 to 1998, it was operated by Associated Universities, Inc. (AUI), but AUI lost its contract in the wake of two incidents: a 1994 fire at the facility's high-flux beam reactor that exposed several workers to radiation and reports in 1997 of a tritium leak into the groundwater of the Long Island Central Pine Barrens on which the facility sits.

Foundations
Following World War II, the US Atomic Energy Commission was created to support government-sponsored peacetime research on atomic energy. The effort to build a nuclear reactor in the American northeast was fostered largely by physicists Isidor Isaac Rabi and Norman Foster Ramsey Jr., who during the war witnessed many of their colleagues at Columbia University leave for new remote research sites following the departure of the Manhattan Project from its campus. Their effort to house this reactor near New York City was rivalled by a similar effort at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to have a facility near Boston. Involvement was quickly solicited from representatives of northeastern universities to the south and west of New York City such that this city would be at their geographic center. In March 1946 a nonprofit corporation was established that consisted of representatives from nine major research universities — Columbia, Cornell, Harvard, Johns Hopkins, MIT, Princeton, University of Pennsylvania, University of Rochester, and Yale University.

Out of 17 considered sites in the Boston-Washington corridor, Camp Upton on Long Island was eventually chosen as the most suitable in consideration of space, transportation, and availability. The camp had been a training center for the US Army during both World War I and World War II, and a Japanese internment camp during the latter. Following the war, Camp Upton was no longer needed, and a plan was conceived to convert the military camp into a research facility.

On March 21, 1947, the Camp Upton site was officially transferred from the U.S. War Department to the new U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), predecessor to the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE).

Reactor history
In 1947 construction began on the first nuclear reactor at Brookhaven, the Brookhaven Graphite Research Reactor. This reactor, which opened in 1950, was the first reactor to be constructed in the United States after World War II. The High Flux Beam Reactor operated from 1965 to 1999. In 1959 Brookhaven built the first US reactor specifically tailored to medical research, the Brookhaven Medical Research Reactor, which operated until 2000.

Accelerator history

In 1952 Brookhaven began using its first particle accelerator, the Cosmotron. At the time the Cosmotron was the world's highest energy accelerator, being the first to impart more than 1 GeV of energy to a particle. The Cosmotron was retired in 1966, after it was superseded in 1960 by the new Alternating Gradient Synchrotron (AGS). The AGS was used in research that resulted in 3 Nobel prizes, including the discovery of the muon neutrino, the charm quark, and CP violation.

In 1970 in BNL started the ISABELLE project to develop and build two proton intersecting storage rings. The groundbreaking for the project was in October 1978. In 1981, with the tunnel for the accelerator already excavated, problems with the superconducting magnets needed for the ISABELLE accelerator brought the project to a halt, and the project was eventually cancelled in 1983.

The National Synchrotron Light Source operated from 1982 to 2014 and was involved with two Nobel Prize-winning discoveries. It has since been replaced by the National Synchrotron Light Source II.

After ISABELLE'S cancellation, physicist at BNL proposed that the excavated tunnel and parts of the magnet assembly be used in another accelerator. In 1984 the first proposal for the accelerator now known as the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) was put forward. The construction got funded in 1991 and RHIC has been operational since 2000. One of the world's only two operating heavy-ion colliders, RHIC is as of 2010 the second-highest-energy collider after the Large Hadron Collider. RHIC is housed in a tunnel 2.4 miles (3.9 km) long and is visible from space.

On January 9, 2020, It was announced by Paul Dabbar, undersecretary of the US Department of Energy Office of Science, that the BNL eRHIC design has been selected over the conceptual design put forward by Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility as the future Electron–ion collider (EIC) in the United States. In addition to the site selection, it was announced that the BNL EIC had acquired CD-0 (mission need) from the Department of Energy. BNL's eRHIC design proposes upgrading the existing Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider, which collides beams light to heavy ions including polarized protons, with a polarized electron facility, to be housed in the same tunnel.

Other discoveries
In 1958, Brookhaven scientists created one of the world's first video games, Tennis for Two.

In 1968 Brookhaven scientists patented Maglev, a transportation technology that utilizes magnetic levitation.

Major facilities

 * Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), which was designed to research quark–gluon plasma and the sources of proton spin. Until 2009 it was the world's most powerful heavy ion collider. It is the only collider of spin-polarized protons.
 * Center for Functional Nanomaterials (CFN), used for the study of nanoscale materials.
 * National Synchrotron Light Source II (NSLS-II), Brookhaven's newest user facility, opened in 2015 to replace the National Synchrotron Light Source (NSLS), which had operated for 30 years. NSLS was involved in the work that won the 2003 and 2009 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
 * Alternating Gradient Synchrotron, a particle accelerator that was used in three of the lab's Nobel prizes.
 * Accelerator Test Facility, generates, accelerates and monitors particle beams.
 * Tandem Van de Graaff, once the world's largest electrostatic accelerator.
 * Computational Science resources, including access to a massively parallel Blue Gene series supercomputer that is among the fastest in the world for scientific research, run jointly by Brookhaven National Laboratory and Stony Brook University.
 * Interdisciplinary Science Building, with unique laboratories for studying high-temperature superconductors and other materials important for addressing energy challenges.
 * NASA Space Radiation Laboratory, where scientists use beams of ions to simulate cosmic rays and assess the risks of space radiation to human space travelers and equipment.

Off-site contributions
It is a contributing partner to ATLAS experiment, one of the four detectors located at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). It is currently operating at CERN near Geneva, Switzerland.

Brookhaven was also responsible for the design of the SNS accumulator ring in partnership with Spallation Neutron Source in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.

Brookhaven plays a role in a range of neutrino research projects around the world, including the Daya Bay Reactor Neutrino Experiment in China and the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory.

Public access
For other than approved Public Events, the Laboratory is closed to the general public. The lab is open to the public on several Sundays during the summer for tours and special programs. The public access program is referred to as 'Summer Sundays' and takes place in July, and features a science show and a tour of the lab's major facilities. The laboratory also hosts science fairs, science bowls, and robotics competitions for local schools, and lectures, concerts, and scientific talks for the local community. The Lab estimates that each year it enhances the science education of roughly 35,000 K-12 students on Long Island, more than 200 undergraduates, and 550 teachers from across the United States.

Environmental cleanup
In January 1997, ground water samples taken by BNL staff revealed concentrations of tritium that were twice the allowable federal drinking water standards—some samples taken later were 32 times the standard. The tritium was found to be leaking from the laboratory's High Flux Beam Reactor's spent-fuel pool into the aquifer that provides drinking water for nearby Suffolk County residents.

DOE's and BNL's investigation of this incident concluded that the tritium had been leaking for as long as 12 years without DOE's or BNL's knowledge. Installing wells that could have detected the leak was first discussed by BNL engineers in 1993, but the wells were not completed until 1996. The resulting controversy about both BNL's handling of the tritium leak and perceived lapses in DOE's oversight led to the termination of AUI as the BNL contractor in May 1997.

The responsibility for failing to discover Brookhaven's tritium leak has been acknowledged by laboratory managers, and DOE admits it failed to properly oversee the laboratory's operations. Brookhaven officials repeatedly treated the need for installing monitoring wells that would have detected the tritium leak as a low priority despite public concern and the laboratory's agreement to follow local environmental regulations. DOE's on-site oversight office, the Brookhaven Group, was directly responsible for Brookhaven's performance, but it failed to hold the laboratory accountable for meeting all of its regulatory commitments, especially its agreement to install monitoring wells. Senior DOE leadership also shared responsibility because they failed to put in place an effective system that encourages all parts of DOE to work together to ensure that contractors meet their responsibilities on environmental, safety and health issues. Unclear responsibilities for environment, safety and health matters has been a recurring problem for DOE management.

Since 1993, DOE has spent more than US$580 million on remediating soil and groundwater contamination at the lab site and completed several high-profile projects. These include the decommissioning and decontamination of the Brookhaven Graphite Research Reactor, removal of mercury-contaminated sediment from the Peconic River, and installation and operation of 16 on- and off-site groundwater treatment systems that have cleaned more than 25 billion gallons of groundwater since 1996.

Shortly after winning the contract to operate the lab in 1997, BSA formed a Community Advisory Council (CAC) to advise the laboratory director on cleanup projects and other items of interest to the community. The CAC represents a diverse range of interests and values of individuals and groups who are interested in or affected by the actions of the Laboratory. It consists of representatives from 26 local business, civic, education, environment, employee, government, and health organizations. The CAC sets its own agenda, brings forth issues important to the community, and works to provide consensus recommendations to Laboratory management.

Nobel Prize in Physics

 * 1957 – Chen Ning Yang and Tsung-Dao Lee – parity laws
 * 1976 – Samuel C. C. Ting – J/Psi particle
 * 1980 – James Cronin and Val Logsdon Fitch – CP-violation
 * 1988 – Leon M. Lederman, Melvin Schwartz, Jack Steinberger – Muon neutrino
 * 2002 – Raymond Davis, Jr. – Solar neutrino

Nobel Prize in Chemistry

 * 2003 – Roderick MacKinnon – Ion channel
 * 2009 – Venkatraman Ramakrishnan and Thomas A. Steitz – Ribosome

title: Brookhaven National Laboratory


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SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory

SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, originally named the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, is a federally funded research and development center in Menlo Park, California, United States. Founded in 1962, the laboratory is now sponsored by the United States Department of Energy and administrated by Stanford University. It is the site of the Stanford Linear Accelerator, a 3.2 kilometer (2-mile) linear accelerator constructed in 1966 that could accelerate electrons to energies of 50 GeV.

Today SLAC research centers on a broad program in atomic and solid-state physics, chemistry, biology, and medicine using X-rays from synchrotron radiation and a free-electron laser as well as experimental and theoretical research in elementary particle physics, astroparticle physics, and cosmology. The laboratory is under the programmatic direction of the United States Department of Energy Office of Science.

History

Founded in 1962 as the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, the facility is located on 426 acre of Stanford University-owned land on Sand Hill Road in Menlo Park, California, just west of the university's main campus. The main accelerator is 2 mi long, making it the longest linear accelerator in the world, and has been operational since 1966.

Research at SLAC has produced three Nobel Prizes in Physics:
 * 1976: The charm quark; see J/ψ meson
 * 1990: Quark structure inside protons and neutrons
 * 1995: The tau lepton

SLAC's meeting facilities also provided a venue for the Homebrew Computer Club and other pioneers of the home computer revolution of the late 1970s and early 1980s.

In 1984, the laboratory was named an ASME National Historic Engineering Landmark and an IEEE Milestone.

SLAC developed and, in December 1991, began hosting the first World Wide Web server outside of Europe.

In the early-to-mid 1990s, the Stanford Linear Collider (SLC) investigated the properties of the Z boson using the Stanford Large Detector.

As of 2005, SLAC employed over 1,000 people, some 150 of whom were physicists with doctorate degrees, and served over 3,000 visiting researchers yearly, operating particle accelerators for high-energy physics and the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory (SSRL) for synchrotron light radiation research, which was "indispensable" in the research leading to the 2006 Nobel Prize in Chemistry awarded to Stanford Professor Roger D. Kornberg.

In October 2008, the Department of Energy announced that the center's name would be changed to SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. The reasons given include a better representation of the new direction of the lab and the ability to trademark the laboratory's name. Stanford University had legally opposed the Department of Energy's attempt to trademark "Stanford Linear Accelerator Center".

In March 2009, it was announced that the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory was to receive $68.3 million in Recovery Act Funding to be disbursed by Department of Energy's Office of Science.

In October 2016, Bits and Watts launched as a collaboration between SLAC and Stanford University to design "better, greener electric grids". SLAC later pulled out over concerns about an industry partner, the state-owned Chinese electric utility.

In April of 2024, SLAC completed two decades of work constructing the world's largest digital camera for the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) project at the Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile. The camera is expected to become operational in 2025.

Accelerator
The main accelerator was an RF linear accelerator that accelerated electrons and positrons up to 50 GeV. At 3.2 km long, the accelerator was the longest linear accelerator in the world, and was claimed to be "the world's most straight object." until 2017 when the European x-ray free electron laser opened. The main accelerator is buried 30 ft below ground and passes underneath Interstate Highway 280. The above-ground klystron gallery atop the beamline, was the longest building in the United States until the LIGO project's twin interferometers were completed in 1999. It is easily distinguishable from the air and is marked as a visual waypoint on aeronautical charts.

A portion of the original linear accelerator is now part of the Linac Coherent Light Source.

Stanford Linear Collider
The Stanford Linear Collider was a linear accelerator that collided electrons and positrons at SLAC. The center of mass energy was about 90 GeV, equal to the mass of the Z boson, which the accelerator was designed to study. Grad student Barrett D. Milliken discovered the first Z event on 12 April 1989 while poring over the previous day's computer data from the Mark II detector. The bulk of the data was collected by the SLAC Large Detector, which came online in 1991. Although largely overshadowed by the Large Electron–Positron Collider at CERN, which began running in 1989, the highly polarized electron beam at SLC (close to 80% ) made certain unique measurements possible, such as parity violation in Z Boson-b quark coupling.

Presently no beam enters the south and north arcs in the machine, which leads to the Final Focus, therefore this section is mothballed to run beam into the PEP2 section from the beam switchyard.

SLAC Large Detector
The SLAC Large Detector (SLD) was the main detector for the Stanford Linear Collider. It was designed primarily to detect Z bosons produced by the accelerator's electron-positron collisions. Built in 1991, the SLD operated from 1992 to 1998.

PEP
PEP (Positron-Electron Project) began operation in 1980, with center-of-mass energies up to 29 GeV. At its apex, PEP had five large particle detectors in operation, as well as a sixth smaller detector. About 300 researchers made used of PEP. PEP stopped operating in 1990, and PEP-II began construction in 1994.

PEP-II
From 1999 to 2008, the main purpose of the linear accelerator was to inject electrons and positrons into the PEP-II accelerator, an electron-positron collider with a pair of storage rings 2.2 km in circumference. PEP-II was host to the BaBar experiment, one of the so-called B-Factory experiments studying charge-parity symmetry.

Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource
The Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource (SSRL) is a synchrotron light user facility located on the SLAC campus. Originally built for particle physics, it was used in experiments where the J/ψ meson was discovered. It is now used exclusively for materials science and biology experiments which take advantage of the high-intensity synchrotron radiation emitted by the stored electron beam to study the structure of molecules. In the early 1990s, an independent electron injector was built for this storage ring, allowing it to operate independently of the main linear accelerator.

Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope
SLAC plays a primary role in the mission and operation of the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, launched in August 2008. The principal scientific objectives of this mission are:
 * To understand the mechanisms of particle acceleration in AGNs, pulsars, and SNRs.
 * To resolve the gamma-ray sky: unidentified sources and diffuse emission.
 * To determine the high-energy behavior of gamma-ray bursts and transients.
 * To probe dark matter and fundamental physics.

KIPAC
The Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology (KIPAC) is partially housed on the grounds of SLAC, in addition to its presence on the main Stanford campus.

PULSE
The Stanford PULSE Institute (PULSE) is a Stanford Independent Laboratory located in the Central Laboratory at SLAC. PULSE was created by Stanford in 2005 to help Stanford faculty and SLAC scientists develop ultrafast x-ray research at LCLS. PULSE research publications can be viewed here.

LCLS
The Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) is a free electron laser facility located at SLAC. The LCLS is partially a reconstruction of the last 1/3 of the original linear accelerator at SLAC, and can deliver extremely intense x-ray radiation for research in a number of areas. It achieved first lasing in April 2009.

The laser produces hard X-rays, 109 times the relative brightness of traditional synchrotron sources and is the most powerful x-ray source in the world. LCLS enables a variety of new experiments and provides enhancements for existing experimental methods. Often, x-rays are used to take "snapshots" of objects at the atomic level before obliterating samples. The laser's wavelength, ranging from 6.2 to 0.13 nm (200 to 9500 electron volts (eV)) is similar to the width of an atom, providing extremely detailed information that was previously unattainable. Additionally, the laser is capable of capturing images with a "shutter speed" measured in femtoseconds, or million-billionths of a second, necessary because the intensity of the beam is often high enough so that the sample explodes on the femtosecond timescale.

LCLS-II
The LCLS-II project is to provide a major upgrade to LCLS by adding two new X-ray laser beams. The new system will utilize the 500 m of existing tunnel to add a new superconducting accelerator at 4 GeV and two new sets of undulators that will increase the available energy range of LCLS. The advancement from the discoveries using this new capabilities may include new drugs, next-generation computers, and new materials.

FACET
In 2012, the first two-thirds (~2 km) of the original SLAC LINAC were recommissioned for a new user facility, the Facility for Advanced Accelerator Experimental Tests (FACET). This facility was capable of delivering 20 GeV, 3 nC electron (and positron) beams with short bunch lengths and small spot sizes, ideal for beam-driven plasma acceleration studies. The facility ended operations in 2016 for the constructions of LCLS-II which will occupy the first third of the SLAC LINAC. The FACET-II project will re-establish electron and positron beams in the middle third of the LINAC for the continuation of beam-driven plasma acceleration studies in 2019.

NLCTA
The Next Linear Collider Test Accelerator (NLCTA) is a 60-120 MeV high-brightness electron beam linear accelerator used for experiments on advanced beam manipulation and acceleration techniques. It is located at SLAC's end station B. A list of relevant research publications can be viewed here.

Theoretical Physics
SLAC also performs theoretical research in elementary particle physics, including in areas of quantum field theory, collider physics, astroparticle physics, and particle phenomenology.

Other discoveries

 * SLAC has also been instrumental in the development of the klystron, a high-power microwave amplification tube.
 * There is active research on plasma acceleration with recent successes such as the doubling of the energy of 42 GeV electrons in a meter-scale accelerator.
 * There was a Paleoparadoxia found at the SLAC site, and its skeleton can be seen at a small museum there in the Breezeway.
 * The SSRL facility was used to reveal hidden text in the Archimedes Palimpsest. X-rays from the synchrotron radiation lightsource caused the iron in the original ink to glow, allowing the researchers to photograph the original document that a Christian monk had scrubbed off.

title: SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory