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Northern Bright Lights
Gn0M3KInG writes "CBC Canada is reporting that the largest Canadian science project in 30 years, a $174 million synchrotron is about to be fired up in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan (Canada - duh!). This little device is capable of generating light millions of times brighter than the sun, and is the first of it's kind in North America. Looks like this could lead to some VERY cool research developments like creating better microchips, and watching living cells react to drugs (amongst others)."
Is CBC Canada like BBC Great Britain?
Available here under "Watch the National online." You'll have to forward and rewind to get to the juicy bits, though, as it's a couple stories embedded within the hour-long newscast.
A shiny new synchrotron in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. Spiffy.
As noted you can nifty things with these like make movies of crystal structures deforming.
And FWIW it amounts to an x-ray laser.
Zee Goggles! Zey do nothing!
You could also just click on the story link, and look to the right of the story, where there is a 1:53 video in both Quicktime and RealVideo formats, and a 2:22 RealAudio clip. There's also the synchrotron website linked on the right side.
What is the sound of a million blinded Canadians blinking?
Do not look into synchrotron with remaining eye.
Liberals call everyone Nazis yet they are the closest thing to it.
But I'm almost certain Strange Brew has the answer.
So what is the thrust of a light source millions of times brighter than the sun? Are you thinking what I'm thinking?
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
Imagine having to pay such a fee for your house! :)
I work in the same research park at the U. of S. where the CLS is located. It's an extremely cool buildling and project; I got a tour of the place while they were still building the ring.
Now if only I could tour Fermilab ...
"That light comes off as a continuum, similar to what you see when the sun shines after a thunderstorm and you get the rainbow effect," said scientist Jeff Cutler of Canadian Light Source. "Same kind of idea here except we generate infrared, we generate visible, and we generate soft and hard X-rays."
wait... don't rainstorm-rainbows separate out the other frequencies also (except for the frequences that water absorms)? If we could see infrared, ultraviolet, X-rays, etc., our rainbows would be wider and have more bands, right?
"Humanity lives and dies by its capabilities of communication, or lack thereof."
Ohh, the chronic we could grow with this thing...
Talk about watching living cells react to drugs!!!!
Not more bands. The rainbow having six bands is a by-product of having three color filters in our eyes. In our case, they are Red, Green, and Blue.
If you want more bands, add to the RGB triplet in our eyes (IRGB? RGBU?). And then re-design the CRT and color TV systems to accomodate, since the monitors will appear to be "burned out", the way they look when green goes out and all you have is red, blue, and intermediate shades of violet.
As my eyes get weaker I may look to buy the consumer version of this thing to read by at night.
Here's a page of links to various synchrotrons around the world:
h tm l
http://www-als.lbl.gov/als/synchrotron_sources.
The clearance system sounds logical. It is not. It is completely arbitrary. -- John Bolton
(Canada - duh!)
:)
:)
Er, shouldn't that be "Cana-duh!"...?
Speaking of which, y'know how they came up with the name "Canada", right?
Seems the early Europeans invaders, er, immigrants, were sitting around the campfire one night trying to come up with something easier to remember than all the funky names the locals used.
After some time arguing they finally decided the best thing to do would be just put a bunch of letters in a hat and see what they pulled out.
"C, ay?"
"N, ay?"
"D, ay?"
(I heard that from a Canadian! So put down the flamethrower, ay?
Take a look at the Real or Quicktime videos at double size starting at about the 56 second mark and you'll see that key control computers run Red Hat Linux.
I deny that I have not avoided attaining the opposite of that which I do not want.
You mean eh, don't you? Not much of a cana-coinnoiseur, eh? Maybe all you need on a cool October day like today is to throw on a nice warm bunnyhug and have a slice of Saskatoon berry pie. Ohhhhh yeaaah. Eh.
As I type this it's coming from the open source linux lab in the spinks building...Computer "Stealth 12" on the U of S. It's a pretty computer. Take that REgina! Schnits0r
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Ever since the Americans started wrecking their economy by starting random wars for false reasons, their dollar has fallen fast. Heck the two currencies are getting closer every day. I wonder if Americans even realize what's happening to their buying power that's kept their economy going so well. I hope they notice and do something before hyper inflation hits.
Fortunately for us, sunlight does not have X-ray in its spectrum. To do better at microelectronic fab, you need shorter wavelength light sources...the ones we have now are already bright enough. If you mean to improve microscopy [for viewing cells in vivo as suggested] by using a light source millions of times brighter than the sun, you better look darn quick...that lil' puppy is gonna vaporize in a microsecond or two and you with it if you don't stand back far enough. /. on it is a bit confusing.
Obviously I gotta RTFA cause what I know of synchrotron radiation is that its for tunable X-ray...good for crystalography but instant cremation for living things so the
SLASHDOT: news for people who can't concentrate on work or have no life at all and got tired of yelling back at the TV.
but he'll never write a whitepaper until he knows the difference between 'your' and 'you're'..
"Conjunction junction, what's your function..."