A large theft has occurred in the Trinity unit, the damage from it is estimated at tens of millions of rubles, a unique accelerator was destroyed, expensive equipment was issued ... ”This information flew out on September 9, the main news sites flew out, and the subjects on leading TV channels passed. Rumors or true? And how serious damage was actually caused by the Institute of RAS? Information was partially confirmed: theft and vandalism took place. But the damage caused by attackers was greatly exaggerated. To accurately evaluate the scale of the disaster, a special commission has been created.

Scientific research can not always be evaluated financially. This happened this time. The commission found that from the point of view of accounting, the institute did not suffer almost any damage. For example, the stolen power supply according to the accounting documents is held as expenditure and materials already written off for installation, an expensive vacuum pump is on the balance of Belgorod colleagues, and the destroyed installations were created by Fiana employees, and, as often it is found, their financial estimate was not made.

Head. The Physics of the High Energy Physics Fiana Anatoly Lviv said what is called “first -hand” about what really happened. “This is quite serious for the people who work for us,” he said, “but still not an universal disaster, as some media painted.” The accelerator itself was practically not injured: some wires were cut, generator lamps are pulled out, this is restored. The Japanese articulated vacuum pump was stolen, designed to create a deep vacuum in the area of ​​passage of an electronic beam through the examinated targets, an expensive picoammeter, as well as a stabilized DC source. The control computer is also destroyed. The most serious damage was suffered by two physical attitudes: to study the properties of nanomaterials and the properties of transitional radiation.

The physical installation was most affected to study the spatial structure of substances and spectral characteristics of the so -called X -ray polarization brake radiation generated by the passing electronic beam.

The injector of the large accelerator Fiana generates an electronic beam of low energies, about 7 MeV. The bundle is usually injected into an accelerating ring, where about 1 billion electron-volts can be accelerated to energy, but it can be used independently. Using attitudes created in the Fian, it is used for material science research and the study of the properties of substances in nanubes. How does this happen? An electronic beam of small intensity is directed and focused on thin targets. Typically, thin foils are used as targets with the thickness of tens of microns of different polycrystalline substances. Electrons, passing through such substances, generate radiation in the X -ray range. Its structure, angular and spectral distribution reflect the internal spatial and atomic structure of the substance. The study of this radiation is a very sensitive and useful tool for studying the distribution, clustering, orientation of molecules, atoms, grains of matter in nano -scale. Such tools are usually called atomic diagnostic tools.

The heart of the installation is a vacuum chamber in which the studied foils are placed on precision oriented-goniometers. A vacuum is needed in order not to interfere with the spread of radiation, not to distort the movement and focus of electrons. The resulting radiation is recorded by semiconductor detectors. This registering equipment - quite delicate and very expensive equipment - is located near a large Fian accelerator. It was she who became the main goal of the vandals. They completely destroyed the electronic control unit of proportional chambers responsible for precision control and guidance of an electronic beam on the target. This block was created by Fiana employees for more than one year. The block included several electronic boards. The boards are taken out, some of them are gone, the microcircuits are pulled out of many, the nests are led out and the bundles of signal wires and power cables are cut off. Now the boards are not operational, and if the researchers turned on the installation, they would be deprived of the opportunity to know where the bundle goes inside the steel impermeable camera, how to bring it to the target. While the installation is not restored, further measurements are impossible. “It is very difficult to restore them,” explained Anatoly Lviv, “this is a handmade: engineers delayed, collected, added, set up for our needs. While brought to mind, several years have passed. ”

Many results of experiments conducted on destroyed installations were obtained by the hands of students, graduate students and employees of the University of Belgorod, they are defended by diplomas, candidate and even doctoral (spring 2015) dissertation. The overall level of research is very high. The results are published in Russian and international scientific journals, reported at conferences, including abroad. “Now it’s hard to say how quickly all this can be fixed,” Lviv believes, “may need many months of painstaking work. For people who are involved in certain research, this is a very significant loss. ”

The second installation of a much smaller scale. She uses the same bundle, but the transitional radiation, once opened by the employees of Fiana, is investigated by the future Nobel Physics Prize by V. L. Ginzburg and I. M. Frank. Electromagnetic waves in vacuum and in substance have different phase speeds. As a result of the usual extinguishing of the waves coming from different sections of the straightforward trajectory of the charged particle, it does not occur, and radiation occurs. It is weak, but very useful for registering charged particles, determining the properties and tracing of their beams. Particle detectors based on the registration of transitional radiation and made by Fian physicists are used in the ATLAS experiment on a large Adron Collider (including in the work during which the Higgs boson was opened). At the installation in Troitsk, the connection of the angular distribution of transition radiation with the properties of an electronic beam and the shape of its electronic clots (banks) is studied. “Interesting results are also obtained on this installation, articles are actively published in prestigious magazines,” Lviv said, “a monograph was published at the end of 2013.”

* * *

The strangest thing in this story is that the vandals got to the accelerator. They got out of the basement there - they knocked out a wooden door. But how did they end up in the basement? To penetrate the accelerator, you need to understand where you are going: do not get lost in endless corridors, find the right door. And to have iron composure in order to slowly destroy the installations, pull out the boards from them, put out the brains on the computer keyboard, capture a 20-kilogram pump and go back with all good.

The sad reality lies in the fact that only this year is the fourth penetration. “In the spring, we simply noticed traces,” said Lviv, “people appeared in the basement, got out, wandered, looked around and left.” There was no alarm with the call of the police - after all, there was no damage. The second case occurred at the end of July, the day after the robbery of Troitsky Izmin. And just like in Izmin, in a violet they pulled out a hard drive from a computer. But in Fiana they still seriously ruined one installation and damaged another. They called the police, but then no publicity then happened. The third time, on the twenties of August, someone penetrated the basement, tore off the loops in the doors, dug in the old electronics. In the first three cases, the vandals frolic away from the accelerator. And on the night of September 7 to 8, they already penetrated the “holy of holies” of Phiana and destroyed those who have value for both employees and their scientific colleagues of the installation.

How can a scientific institution from such penetrations be protected? Good guard always costs money. And the budget of the Research Institute is limited - alas, there is not enough money even for science ...

From the editorial office

There were not three hints for the relevant services of Fian and law enforcement agencies. We waited for a big trouble. If the incident happened at once, it would be most like a pre -planned action carried out with the involvement of competent and informed people. However, if you do not pay attention to the preceding “trifles”, then the plaque from the “catch” can also be carried out from the distant science, having trained and sorted out the situation. Nevertheless, it is amazing with how much the attackers entered the Research Institute and gained access to buildings and installations. It is unlikely that in academic institutes there are equipment, careless handling of which can lead to serious consequences. But if a disregard for the protection of what really needs to be protected is a general trend, then ... the most modest question of the emerging: and why, for example, created a fano? What about the agency contributed to at least the high -quality protection of the institutions entrusted to it? By the way, the situation is given by the fact that the Trinity Department of Internal Affairs adjoins the situation to the fence of Fiana ...