It's the 21st Century, and we've finally gotten our disintegrator ray!
Shame it only works on wee tiny targets.
Boffins play with the world's most powerful X‑ray gun to shoot molecules
A group of scientists has focused the world’s most powerful X‑ray beam on a molecule to test out the Linac Coherent Light Source at the US Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. The pulse was so intense that within 30 femtoseconds – a millionth of a billionth of a second – more than 50 electrons were …
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Thursday 1st June 2017 08:11 GMT Dave 126
Researching proteins that have gone awry is indeed an aim of this laser technique. Only last Saturday a protein researcher was on ABC's radio Science Show, talking about how his laser wasn't powerful enough but he knew a lab who would let him have a go with theirs: (link to page with MP3)
http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/scienceshow/understanding-protein-structure-may-allow-treatment-for-amyloid/8561868
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Thursday 1st June 2017 04:30 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: The real story here...
...is the tech that created those x-ray mirrors and did the fine focusing.
The technology behind the X-ray optics is indeed very impressive - even if was mostly developed for use with synchrotrons, which operate at similar wavelengths. The much more amazing part of the linac X-ray source technology is the degree of control over electron bunches in the beam they achieve, and the fact that they manage to synchronize the laserr light pjlse and relativistic electron bunch to within 100 fem5oseconds or so over a distance of a few kilometers.
It is amazing what you can achieve with a lot of smart people and a few billions to spend.
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Wednesday 31st May 2017 23:00 GMT John Smith 19
Astonishing.
It seems the Iodine atom absorbs the Xrays (about 0.15nm) which cause electrons to be ejected from deep inside the atom. However not only does this trigger electrons to drop into these vacant orbitals (which should emit other xrays) it also pulls electrons in from the rest of the molecule.
That said I'm not sure how common Iodine containing molecules are in biochemistry, although there's meant to be a lot of it in seaweed.
Incidentally those laser fusion systems only generate Xrays around 150 eV and spend an awful lot of laser energy to do so. :-( .
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Thursday 1st June 2017 04:04 GMT Chemist
Re: Astonishing.
"That said I'm not sure how common Iodine containing molecules are in biochemistry, although there's meant to be a lot of it in seaweed."
Not often found in drugs but 'heavy' atoms are often substituted into materials for x-ray crystallography to help in the process fr solving the structure. This is often Sulfur being replaced by Selenium in protein crystallography. As mentioned in the article damage by the x-ray beam to the crystals used is a major problem in obtaining high-quality structural info.
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Thursday 1st June 2017 04:42 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Astonishing.
However not only does this trigger electrons to drop into these vacant orbitals (which should emit other xrays) it also pulls electrons in from the rest of the molecule ...
The fact that core-excited atoms preferentially decay by ejecting one or more electrons, rather than by X-ray fluorescence has been known since 1922. The fact that these excited states can also "borrow" the electrons from neighbouring atoms has been recognized for at least past 20 years.
What is new with with the linac X-ray sources is the ability to pump in the X-ray photons fast enough to outrun the Auger-type decay.
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Thursday 1st June 2017 00:05 GMT FlamingDeath
I have become the destroyer of worlds
The problem with these scientists is many of them are so heavily focused on solving problems that they give zero thought of the genie they could potentially be letting out of the bottle. Some might even say, autistic
So when the next weapon of mass destruction is created, we will have these unthinking scientists to congratulate.
Don't get me wrong, I am not a luddite and I do support the scientific method and that of discovery. But man some of these scientists need to think about consequenses, rather than some gong award
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Thursday 1st June 2017 04:09 GMT Flocke Kroes
Re: I have become the destroyer of worlds
Killer scientist: Look I have a new weapon of mass destruction!
Arms dealer: Cool, whats the range and area of the death zone?
Killer scientist: A few cm and 8x10⁻¹⁵m².
Arms dealer: What?
Killer scientist: You get someone in there and they are going to die!
Arms dealer: Of course, they wouldn't fit.
Killer scientist: That's just the detector to find out what happened when we shoot something. You don't need that.
Arms dealer: That's a relief. It looked a bit expensive and impossible to transport. Where is the actual weapon?
Killer scientist points.
Arms dealer: That tunnel goes on forever!
Killer scientist: The tunnel is 3.2km long, but we only use the last km.
Arms dealer walks away.
Killer scientist: That's just the first prototype. The next version will only be half a km long.
Arms dealer (calls back over his shoulder): Still wouldn't fit on an aircraft carrier.
Killer scientist: Aircraft carrier - good choice. You would need the nuclear reactor as a power source... Why are you leaving?
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Thursday 1st June 2017 01:10 GMT DNTP
I used to be a MALDI-TOFfer
My old job was shooting DNA fragments with a pretty serious UV laser so they'd ionize and fly down a meter-long aluminium tube and pass a timed detector. You never quite lose that thrill of sitting down at the control console and pulling the trigger on that thing, feeling the power of energy being released and seeing the spectrum generate every time it pulsed.
Actually the only sound it made was a faint clicking and the only visible effect was flashing light on the microscope camera screen. But to be honest the next-gen sequencing technology that replaced my spectrophotometer setup is much less fun to run.
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Thursday 1st June 2017 11:29 GMT Omgwtfbbqtime
xenon atoms, iodomethane (CH3I) and iodobenzene (C6H5I) - Boring!
What happens if you fire it at Hexanitrohexaazaisowurtzitane ?
Biting the hand that feeds IT
