My Sambo and I moved to Lund in late autumn last year. Lund represents the highest latitude at which I have ever lived. This meant darkness creeping in surprisingly early in the afternoons, and increasingly so until the winter solstice. 3 pm felt like “evening” and 8 was the depth of the dark night. Even during the day, clouds and fog obscured the sun so much that a clear night’s moon was equally as bright as the day’s sun. The fog crept into my head as well, dampening energy and clouding any ambition.

Routine became the savior of salvaging productivity. One of these routines was walking up a hill each “evening” to survey the landscape and reflect on the day. At the top of the hill is an iconic fixture in Lund: the sillouhettes of two metallic bulls, facing off with one another. An eye-catching icon on a hillside at the edge of town is especially wont to accumulate its share of graffiti. Cryptically sprayed on one bull during our first couple months in Lund was, “Nej till ESS!” On the other was the universal nuclear warning sign.

At the time, I had no idea what was meant by the graffiti. It seemed a code crackable only by Lund insiders. Upon each sighting I was reminded of the ignorance, carried with much chagrin, I suffered from as a new immigrant.

Little did I know that a few short months later, I would be blogging about ESS and even countering the emphatic “Nej” painted on the side of the bull. (Lund is very kind to immigrants and gently dusts off the ignorance we newbies inherently bring.)

However, the message there sprayed still speaks loudly to me (…not to mention, finally comprehensibly…). It’s the sort of message that often finds itself cloaked in spray paint on the hillside by the highway rather than backed by millions of kronor of promised economic prosperity. On the down side, the ESS project brings with it change, lots of energy consumption, a little radioactivity, and the potential for us to all get sucked into a black hole it unwittingly creates (more later). A few things to consider (and one in which to find comic relief).

Yet for me, the promise of cutting-edge science taking place just a skate’s blade from my turf is way exciting. So I say, “Yay till ESS!”

ESS (European Spallation Source) is a proposed state-of-the-art research facility to be built in Lund, Sweden. The overall aim is to blast neutrons at things via a linear accelerator in order to figure out what’s going on at the atomic level in various materials which we like to use for technology, medicine, packaging, etc.

What it is:

<@> European: the project is initiated and funded by the EU. The EU is trying to catch up with the USA and Japan, which already have similar facilities under construction.

<@> Spallation: a process used for getting a bunch of neutrons free. In spallation, they actually shoot protons at heavy metals such as lead, mercury or tantalum. This causes the metals to spew neutrons. Then the neutrons are used to penetrate the objects of study.

<@> Source: straight to the source, man! It’s all going down in Lund.

So, the site chosen for the facility happens to be right along my favorite inline skating route. I travel the route most days (now that the weather is suitable) and my imagination tends to fill in laboratories and manicured lawns where there are now fields. I must say that simply the thought of the facility is accelerating my own linear movement, though I’ll not be a match for a little proton traveling the same route once the accelerator is functional.

A series of buildings and the accelerator are set to be built along a strip of land spanning the gap between a highway and a parallel country road (my skating route). The site starts at the Northeast tip of town and jettisons out in the same direction for a couple kilometers or so. I imagine the plan must have been in the works for some time, as a good swath of seemingly prime real estate has been lying underutilized. On the site currently are fields, a ruin of an old youth hostel and farm, and 4-ish nice homesteads, which will have to come down. Here’s a preliminary map of the site thanks to the Skåne Regional Development Department.

Map of linear accelerator site in Lund.