I am preparing for the release of the latest Diamond podcast, which this month is on the topic of cultural heritage, and will coincide with some research from Diamond being promoted at this year’s British Science Festival.

The cultural heritage applications of synchrotrons are very interesting and herein lies the problem: whilst it makes up less than 5% of the research carried out at Diamond, and similar at fellow synchrotrons, it seems to be the area that gets all the media coverage. Mention the Dead Sea scrolls, the Mary Rose or Egyptian mummies and the story goes everywhere. It’s not just Diamond – our sister synchrotron ESRF has a resident palaeontologist who has graced the BBC News pages more than once.

Don’t get me wrong, these are good stories. It’s just frustrating when there are equally significant advances in materials science or solid state physics and no-one is interested. We see a certain amount of coverage of the life sciences, mainly potential cures for diseases, and environmental applications are also quite popular, but physical science, which makes up about 40% of synchrotron research, doesn’t seem to feature.