World's First X-Ray Laser Goes Live 238
smolloy writes "The world's first X-ray laser (LCLS) has seen first light.
A Free Electron Laser (FEL) is based on the light that is emitted by accelerated electrons when they are forced to move in a curved path. The beam then interacts with this emitted light in order to excite coherent emission (much like in a regular laser); thus producing a very short, extremely bright, bunch of coherent X-ray photons. The engineering expertise that went into this machine is phenomenal — 'This is the most difficult light source that has ever been turned on,' said LCLS Construction Project Director John Galayda. 'It's on the boundary between the impossible and possible, and within two hours of start-up these guys had it right on.' — and the benefits to the applied sciences from research using this light can be expected to be enormous: 'For some disciplines, this tool will be as important to the future as the microscope has been to the past,' said SLAC Director Persis Drell."
Re:First? (Score:5, Interesting)
Considering that our pre-Star Wars anti-bomber defenses included preparing to toss up missiles with nuclear warheads in the midst of bomber formations, often necessarily over populated areas (as with Nike-Hercules), its not like the bomb-pumped lasers to defend against ballistic missiles would have been all that out of line with what preceded them (had they, you know, been practical to deploy.)
Stupid question (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Awesome (Score:5, Interesting)
I had the pleasure of taking a tour of the Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Labs. They have a similar setup; using accelerated electrons to produce x-rays, the real achievement here is the coherency part. I wonder how this effects high speed x-ray crystallography, is it easier to decode the scatter if the light is coherent? Will we be getting real time videos of enzymes in action? If so I can only imagine what that will do for chemical and pharmaceutical research.
Also, I hope this is the first step in a fairly rapid development of a tabletop x-ray laser that can live in a lab. Last time I spent a week doing small angle x-ray scattering at Argonne I had to be in the top 3 of the 48 requests submitted for x-ray time on the beamline I wanted in order to get an invitation. The other 45 groups got rejected. X-ray time is a limiting factor in a very large number of scientific fields.
Not that I don't appreciate coherency.
Re:A big medical breakthrough. (Score:3, Interesting)
> You won't be able to see what you are pointing at...
I suspect that sufficient power at 1.5nm will make just about anything flouresce. Or at least glow.
I think you are confused. (Score:5, Interesting)
Everyone seems to be confused about what an x-ray laser is. It isn't like a laser pointer that can be focused down to a small dot. X-ray's can't readily be focused, except by clever uses of beryllium [accel.de], and even those aren't very efficient.
No, the applications of this are quite different. Think about an expanded laser beam. What can you do with that? Well, you can make holograms, for one. An interesting thing about holograms is that the size of the image scales with the light that illuminates them. So, if you could record a hologram in X-rays, then view it with red light, it would be magnified by ~700 times. Unfortunately, x-ray holograms are unlikely, because recording a hologram requires redirecting the beam at least once. The best X-ray mirrors (beryllium) are no more than 1% efficient.
So X-ray lasers aren't really that interesting for the layman. However, they are extremely important for science. I don't know specifically what this one will be used for, but you can bet it will lead to new discoveries.
Re:Awesome (Score:3, Interesting)
*blinks*
*thinks to self:Huh?*....Head a splodes!*
*recovers*
'Enzymes'? something about catalyst? Can't remember...
Okay, this is obviously(to me at least) over my head, but I think I 'get it'.
Is this a 'new' field of study that has potential to do stuff we don't expect? Maybe be able to capture video of enzymes in action in 5-10 years?
I am truly NOT trying to be a smartass, but this sounds like a frontier that we can eventually cross, and would be beneficial to mankind/science/medicine.
Is there no hope for this, or just lack of tech/understanding at this time?
This may help quantify my question...
I am 51 years old. I have seen stuff in the past 20 years that I would have denounced as impossible during my first 30 years.
Dad worked for NASA(as did I), so I was lucky enough to watch Neil Armstrong step onto the moon from Goddard Space Flight Center's Mission Control room....LIVE! That memory will last as long as my mind/I do...and is treasured by me beyond mainstream belief.
The list of other examples is long...
I guess what I am questing for here is, Will it ever be possible?
or just not possible at this time?
I assume the latter, as impossible seems to be an impossible concept in science.
X-ray diffractometry may not be the tool to allow this now, but I suspect we will eventually find a way to 'film' processes we are exploring.
I am not assuming you are claiming 'impossible' here. I'm just looking for some clarity in what I see as murky waters. :-)
BTW, I do have enough training/education to know that 'enzymes, and how they work' is a lifetime study...just to scratch the surface.(My B.S. degree is in Biochemistry, my major(oddly enough) is an A.A.S. in Veterinary Technology...long story-short, when I got my A.A.S. in Vet Tech, I only needed 14 credit hours for a B.S. degree in many 'science' fields. Biochemistry fascinated me at the time, so I did it for kicks- 14 hours? Pshaw!14 hours==light semester...easy as the summer semesters-also 14 hours![5 semesters==106 credit hours for the Vet Tech program, 120 needed for a B.S.... really, one easy semester after what you have already survived] and opened a lot of doors career-wise)
So, I'm not completely clueless here, but almost knowledgeable enough to be dangerously stupid.
Re:A big medical breakthrough. (Score:2, Interesting)
I was surprised, but the LCLS laser doesn't make thing fluoresce. We had a camera watching a wavelength calibration foil (Nickel) and didn't see any light at all until we burned through. We don't have a good energy calibration yet, but it is something like a millijoule in 50 femtoseconds.
Re:A big medical breakthrough. (Score:3, Interesting)
Holy crap. My research is relevant to something for once!
We're working on improving the accelerating gradients of linacs. Although I'm not sure that we'll ever get to the point where this technology is practical for use in CT scanners, we've had tremendous improvements over the past few years. Utilizing superconducting accelerating cavities, we've improved acceleration gradients from 5-7MV/m (megavolts per meter) to 35-70MV/m, with further improvements hypothetically possible.
The ILC (International Linear Collider -- the LHC's linear collider cousin) could be up to 50 miles long according to some estimates. CERN believe that they can build a 150MV/m machine [symmetrymagazine.org], using a novel technique to achieve acceleration (although this has yet to be seen).
SLAC, where this facility is located, was built in 1962, and utilizes copper accelerating cavities, as opposed to the superconducting niobium cavities used in most new big linacs. Further, only the last 1/3 of the accelerator is used for the LCLS (ie. the X-Ray Laser). I haven't done the calculations (nor am I particularly familiar with the LCLS), though I'd imagine that you'd be able to considerably cut down on the size if LCLS were constructed with a new linac.
Re:First? (Score:2, Interesting)
Ronnie promised us that SDI would make nuclear weapons "impotent and obsolete". I think he didn't quite understand how hard that is.
Oh, I don't know; I'm pretty sure he did. You see, the whole idea of SDI was to start something very expensive that Just Might Work. That meant that the Soviets had to try to copy us, and the effort caused their rickety, barely-functional economy to collapse, bringing down the whole Soviet Union with it. .
Riiight. And that's exactly what Ronnie was thinking about when he shoveled all that money to SDI. "Let's do this because we know the Russians can't possibly keep up and it will bankrupt them!"
Re:First? (Score:3, Interesting)
Storage application? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Awesome (Score:3, Interesting)
From that article:
How do you manage to scatter less than 1 photon?
Do they mean that they had to create 25 shots to get a single photon to register? Or is there something else going on here?
not a true laser (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:No, SDI did not collapse the Soviet Union (Score:3, Interesting)
When it comes to Reagan, the liberals are just as bad. They constantly refuse to admit that the economy was booming under him, and pretend that he was already suffering from Alzheimer's when he was President, long before the first symptoms showed up. I don't know about you, but I remember the Reagan years, very well, and for the most part, they were very good years indeed, far better than that piss-poor excuse for a President Carter could ever have managed/