A MILESTONE scientific facility at Daresbury Labs which has been used to conduct more than two million hours of research over 28 years was finally closed on Monday.

The Synchrotron Radiation Source at Daresbury Labs has played a key role in a range of cutting edge research.

And as the first machine of its kind, Daresbury’s SRS led to the development of a further 60 such facilities globally.

It is now being superseded by a successor - the Diamond Light Source in Oxfordshire.

The SRS produces a light source of such intensity that it can reveal the structure of atoms inside materials.

The device was used by Sir John Walker in 1997 for solving the structure of enzyme which gave new insights into regenerative medicine and metabolic diseases, and earned him a share in a Nobel Prize

Over its lifetime the SRS has been used by more than 11,000 scientists and has led to the publication of more than 5,000 research papers and a range of patents.