The shell construction work for the high-performance Fair Control Center on the premises of the GSI Helmholtz Center for Heavy Ion Research in Darmstadt began on Tuesday.
"With the Fair facility, researchers from all over the world will be able to investigate key questions about the structure of the universe by generating the fundamental processes in the laboratory, but also to advance applications in medicine, materials research and IT, for example," he explained Scientific Director of GSI and Fair, Professor Paolo Giubellino.
The symbolic laying of the foundation stone for one of the largest and most complex construction projects for research worldwide took place in the morning with high-ranking guests from politics, science and the construction industry.
Hesse's Science Minister Angela Dorn (Greens) emphasized at the ceremony: "With Fair, a unique facility is being created that is also of outstanding importance for the Hessian research landscape." Federal Research Minister Bettina Stark-Watzinger (FDP ), Hesse's finance minister Michael Boddenberg (CDU) and Darmstadt's mayor Jochen Partsch (Greens).
The start of the work is an important stage in the construction of the international accelerator center Fair, explained the spokesman for FAIR GmbH, Ingo Peter, in a statement.
The Fair Control Center - short for "Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research" - will be a crucial hub of the entire infrastructure on the GSI/Fair campus after completion.
The Fair accelerator facilities will deliver particle beams of unprecedented intensity and precision.
These enable researchers to carry out unique experiments in order to gain new insights into the structure of matter and the development of the universe from the Big Bang to the present.
Therefore, an integrated, state-of-the-art control center is required to control and monitor the extremely complex accelerator facility.
In addition to the new main control room, more than 200 new scientific office workplaces as well as meeting rooms and a visitor gallery are to be created in the building.
The five-story Fair Control Center (FCC) has a total area of around 6,000 square meters.
At the same time, Fair offers an ideal training location for the next generation of scientists and engineers.
Fair is scheduled to go into operation gradually over the next few years.