Bonus trip · Buildings Walk
ELI Laser Centre
ELI ALPS · Wolfgang Sandner utca 3 · 2017
On the edge of town stands a research centre whose white-and-red interior echoes the space station in 2001: A Space Odyssey. They work with the shortest flashes of light in the world here.
ELI ALPS is the Szeged institute of the European ELI laser research network; the other two are in Prague and in Măgurele, Romania. It produces attosecond light pulses. An attosecond is a billionth of a billionth of a second.
It was inaugurated on 23 May 2017. It cost more than 70 billion forints, 85 per cent paid by the EU.
On the 16.6-hectare site there are about 25,000 square metres of buildings on 819 concrete piles. The laser halls were built on a vibration-free foundation as a “house within a house”, and the radiation-shielded areas are enclosed in 1–2 metres of reinforced concrete. 45,656 cubic metres of concrete were poured, with mixer trucks queuing from the neighbouring counties.
In the reception area a 20-metre glass cage holds an orange, pebble-shaped geodome. The white-and-red interior echoes the space station in 2001: A Space Odyssey.
In 2023 the Nobel Prize in Physics went to attosecond light pulses. According to Telex, laureate Ferenc Krausz played an important part in bringing the centre to Szeged, and Anne L'Huillier helped design one of its instruments.
BYD's car factory is now being built next door.
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- TrueInaugurated 23 May 2017. Cost: over 70 billion forints, 85% EU funding.
- True25,000 m² of buildings on 819 concrete piles, on a 16.6-hectare site.
- TrueThe interior echoes the space station in 2001: A Space Odyssey.
- TrueThe subject of the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physics is researched here.