Often I’ve felt an odd “queasiness” at synchrotrons. Part of it is the constant noise and the inevitable fluorescent lights. But most of it comes from being in a large, very large, circular building where most everything looks the same. A small round room would be bad enough, but (I think) you’d rather quickly adjust after all it is in fact round and rather apparent. A synchrotron is a little different.

There’s the large size and there are also an enormous number of straight lines. However, there must also be bends...

The picture above looks like it’s been taken through a distorted lens. It seems like you should be looking down a hall and that it’s been manipulated to be skewed. But in fact, that’s just the way things look. It’s all big enough that it seems as though it should be straight. Pretty much anywhere in the facility, any way you look, you’ll see hallways, walls, pipes and conduits all going and bending in ways that just do not seem ‘right’.