SCIENTISTS have created the world’s brightest light and will use it to look at molecules and atoms in more detail than before.

The beam, made of synchronic light — created when electrons are fired in a vacuum along a circular tube at close to the speed of light — is almost 100 billion times brighter than the Sun and will be the light source of a £373million “giant microscope”, the Diamond project, being built in Didcot, Oxfordshire.

The beam will be used like a giant torch and highlight molecular structures in such detail that researchers will be able to map atoms.

Scientists hope the light will enable them to develop life-saving drugs, explain how the Earth and other planets were formed, and even improve the taste of chocolate.

The technology to create synchronic light has been available to scientists for more than 30 years but the Didcot centre will have the most advanced.

To create synchronic light high-powered magnets along the circular tube force the charged particles to accelerate, thus radiating light.

The light can be directed at a tangent from the storage tube into laboratories, where it can be targeted at scientists’ will.

An electron gun initially fires the electrons into an inner booster tube before they are channelled into the outer storage ring ready for use in experiments. At Didcot the storage ring measures 561.6m (1,845ft) and is the third biggest, and the most powerful, in the world.

The Diamond project announced yesterday that recent tests had shown that the synchrotron emitter was working and that the first experiments would take place in January.

Up to 35 laboratories, each with access to the synchrotron light beam, are being built around the outer ring and will be available to a wide range of disciplines, including molecular biology, chemistry and engineering.

“For scientists this is like providing them with a bank of super-microscopes,” said Isabelle Boscaro-Clarke, of the Diamond project. “It’s the brightest light in the world.”

Richard Walker, the centre’s technical director, said that the light beam could be directed so accurately that it could create a spotlight small enough to view matter at a sub-micron level.

“It’s an extremely important facility nationally and internationally,” he said.

“It’s the most major civilian scientific investment for over 30 years in the UK and is the culmination of ten years of planning. It will bring us into the forefront of synchrotron research.”

The Diamond centre houses a third-generation synchrotron that is hundreds of thousands of times more powerful than the facility at Daresbury, near Warrington, that was built more than 25 years ago.

Dr Walker said that advances in technology, particularly in devices that maximise output by forcing electrons to move in waves rather than straight lines, meant that experiments could be carried out much more quickly.

Professor Philip Withers, of the University of Manchester, said that the Diamond project was state-of-the-art.

“For us it’s a very powerful torch that allows us to see inside materials,” he said.

Thomas Sorensen, who is in charge of drugs and disease research at Diamond, added: “It reveals how life works.”

Synchrotron technology has been used in several major scientific advances. It was used in the development of the anti-flu drug Relenza, the mapping of the foot-and-mouth virus and, as part of a pollution control programme, in the detection of arsenic in wetlands.

Engineers have used the technology to test how building materials, such as composites used in aircraft engines, react under different stresses.

For scientists investigating the birth of the solar system, the technology can be used to identify the processes that led to the formation of the Earth.

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