Post by DESY

In the news last week, a story about a chunk of amber from Goethe's personal collection made waves across Germany. Scientists from Friedrich Schiller University Jena led a research campaign at a DESY PETRA III beamline operated by Helmholtz-Zentrum Hereon involving samples from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's house in neighbouring Weimar – a shelf of amber pieces from the writer and polymath's private collection – within one of which a 40-million-year-old ant was found in exquisitely preserved detail. How did this research come to end up at DESY? As it turns out, that Hereon–PETRA III beamline, P05, is one of the premier locations in Europe for amber research, with analysed samples coming from across the globe. You can read more about the tools used to find and model the ant as well as how this research relates to a common type of medical scan (and its potential improvement!) here: https://lnkd.in/d7AiX7Sp