The project, coordinated by Prof. Édouard Bard, deputy director of CEREGE, will receive €2.7 million from the ANR for analytical equipment and around €1 million for operating costs until 2020.
The ASTER-CEREGE isotope geochemistry platform will be managed by Paul Cézanne Aix-Marseille University, in collaboration with the other supervisory bodies of UMR-6635 CEREGE : CNRS/INSU, Collège de France and IRD, and in partnership with an INRA laboratory located on the same campus of the Technopôle Méditerranéen de l'Arbois in Aix-en-Provence.
The aim of the ASTER-CEREGE project is to extend and diversify our range of isotope geochemistry instruments and bring them up to the highest international standards. The project comprises three complementary pieces of instrumentation: a miniature gas pedal mass spectrometer (AMS) dedicated specifically to measuring carbon-14 in gaseous and solid micro-samples (photo 1); a plasma source and multi-collector mass spectrometer (MC-ICPMS photo 2); and a more powerful ion source for the 5 MV ASTERisques gas pedal already on site (photo 3). These three pieces of equipment will be used in combination for research focused on scientific themes at the heart of the major social debates currently taking place.
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Article published in La Lettre du Collège de France n° 31, June 2011
