Scientists’ bright idea to protect the Mary Rose: harness the light of 10 billion suns
Particle accelerator will help to reveal why parts of Henry VIII’s 500-year-old warship are disintegrating
SCIENTISTS are planning to use light beams 10billion times stronger than the sun to help preserve the Mary Rose, Henry VIII’s warship.
They hope a powerful X-ray technique will show how quickly 500-yearold bricks, part of two large ovens in the galley, are disintegrating because of being permeated with sodium chloride from seawater. They are currently on display in Portsmouth’s Historic Dockyard but after spending centuries in the sea, they are slowly crumbling.
“The bricks can tell us about how sailors cooked on board,” said Dr Eleanor Schofield, conservation manager of the he Mary Rose Trust.
Next month, her team will examine 20 samples of brick using a giant synchrotron particle accelerator called the Diamond Light Source at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Harwell, near Oxford.
Covering an area equal to five football pitches, the synchrotron generates intense light to probe matter down to the molecular and atomic scale.
Inside, electrons are accelerated at almost the speed of light into a doughnut-like vacuum chamber, which measures 1,846ft in circumference.
“By accelerating these electrons at super-high velocities, you create very intense light that’s super focused,” said Prof Laurent Chapon, Diamond’s physical sciences director.
“The light is 10billion times brighter than the sun. You wouldn’t want to put your head in front of it. You’d be disintegrated.”
Once accelerated, the intense light beams, smaller than the width of a human hair, are directed into various beam lines where they pass through samples of the brick to probe deep into their structure.
Dr Schofield said: “We will certainly be able to answer some questions in the coming months.”
The Mary Rose, the pride of Henry VIII’s battle fleet, sank in the Solent in 1545 in the Third French War while leading an attack. The King is believed to have watched her rapid demise in horror from shore. Around 500 men on board died while just 35 swam to safety.
Remarkably, the starboard hull remained intact after being covered in mud, which prevented it from being eroded and attacked by bacteria.
As well as the hull and bricks, the mud helped preserve more than 19,000 artefacts, including 1,200 cannonballs, which are also being analysed at the Diamond Light Source.
Hayley Simon, a Diamond Light Source researcher, believes Henry VIII would have been impressed by today’s research. “I feel like there was a tradition of innovation back then, so this definitely would have been in line with his way of thinking,” she said.
‘There was a tradition of innovation then, so this would have been in line with Henry VIII’s thinking’