Commissioner gets to grips with research

HOW nuclear physics helped reveal that a Bronze Age sword was never used to kill anyone has been explained to EU research commissioner Máire Geoghegan-Quinn on her first visit to one of the EU’s flagship research laboratories.

Found near the village of Buggenum in the Netherlands, the richly decorated weapon originally came from the upper Danube region of Austria.

Archaeologists wanted to learn more about it and a retired physicist came up with the answer – bring it to the Joint Research Centre’s (JRC) lab in Belgium.