Strangeness at the international Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research

The project of the international Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research (FAIR), co-located to the GSI facility in Darmstadt, was officially started on November 7, 2007. An investment of about 1 billion euro will permit new physics programs in the areas of low and medium energy antiproton research, heavy ion physics complementary to LHC, as well as in nuclear structure and astrophysics. The facility will comprise about a dozen accelerators and storage rings, which will enable simultaneous operations of up to four different beams.