TRIUMF Day 4 - ARIEL and CMMS

 Today was focused on a number of Science Week sessions on ARIEL with the highlight being a tour of the Centre for Molecular and Materials Science (CMMS) with Iain McKenzie.

This morning's talks started with a look at what they are looking at for early science investigations at ARIEL, including further research into X-ray FLASH radiotherapy. FLASH radiotherapy is a fascinating potential for curing cancer. Researchers this week have been talking about how it was first done decades ago, had some promising results, but everyone figured it was too good to be true and got shelved in favour of other courses of treatment. Now, FLASH is being seen as the next big thing in cancer treatment, but there is still lots of hesitancy as researchers are still trying to figure out the exact mechanism by which it works. Until they get it all figured out, there is a lot of cautious optimism and it's a high priority for further research.

After this session, I met up with Iain and he took me over to CMMS at the back of Meson Hall. There he showed me the work he does with muon research. His work extends over a wide variety of areas from spectroscopy using gamma rays emitted from muons as they move from one energy state to another orbiting a nucleus (the exact same way that we look at visible light emitted from electrons as they move from one energy level to the next) to looking at how lithium ions act to looking at sodium ions as a potential replacement for lithium in battery technology where weight is not a consideration (for example, in batteries used for solar power in a home). As their experiments currently produce mostly positively-charged muons (anti-matter muons?? I really should have asked for clarification on this while I had the chance!), they currently work with what they have. From CMMS he took me on a tour of the lower level experiments in Meson Hall and then off to ISAC I to see the βNMR (shown below) and βNQR experiments up close. Iain was an absolutely incredible host and I learned so much from talking with him!

I then went back to the auditorium to learn more about the new ARIEL facility and it's implications for TRIUMF and their research. On the way to the Science Week BBQ, I had made my way to the traffic circle in front of TRIUMF where Newton's apple trees are located and took the obligatory science geek photo!