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Desktop Synchrotron to Capture Molecular Action
Syncrhronymous Coward writes "Researchers led by Dino Jaroszynski of Strathclyde University have developed a desktop synchrotron particle accelerator that could soon freeze-frame the motion of atoms and molecules. Using a laser, some gas, and a row of magnets, his team put together a source of 'synchrotron light', which they say can be easily upgraded to produce intense, ultra-short pulses of X-rays — ideal for probing the intricate structure of many kinds of matter. Instead of a conventional ring of magnets and microwave cavities, they use an experimental technology called plasma wakefield acceleration."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wakefield_Accelerator
Do you know if they can somehow take a picture of the atoms while it is at a freeze frame? or will the photon cause the atoms to move again? I just need some pictures of real atoms to prove to my liberal art 'friends' that atoms are not just some random stuff we (chemist and chem e) thought up to confuse them.
2008 looks like it is finally going to be the year of the synchrotron on the desktop!
Hopefully I didn't put any [] around my words.
Except Aaron Boone, dammit.
IAASS (I am a synchrotron scientist). This looks like the ideal solution to the always crippling problem of never having enough beamtime. This will become especially bad in the UK over the next few years as the SRS closes but before Diamond has all its beamlines running. In my own area we like to combine the problems of not having much beamtime with all the problems of vacuum systems. I would love to have my own source at university with out having to moving everything for every experiment.
Will wash cars for karma
way cool! I know what I'm doing in my shed this Christmas!
and if my neighbors complain? well, I've have* a very powerful laser....
*(well maybe not, at £1-2m thats a little out of my fripperies budget, back to building the war robot then. shucks)
...I've got a real one in the next building! :)
On a slightly related note, here's the physics of supersonic solar plasma flows, the termination shock, the heliopause and Voyager, all demonstrated in your kitchen sink. Superb stuff courtesy of The Planetary Society. "Really baked my noodle" - Satisfied customer.
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Did that sentence sound very MacGyver to anyone else?
Proton Packs are right around the corner.
Just don't cross the streams, of course.
Kythe
pulse length is ~10 fs or 3 microns at the speed of light. Since most of the stuff one looks at is at thermal velocities, this is certainly a macroscopic freeze frame. To look at steps of chemical reactions, sub-femtosecond pulses are desirable. Google "energy recovery linac" (ERL) for information on a mechanism for getting such short pulses. UK was hoping to build an ERL-based light source at Daresbury but the budget news out today http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/32163 suggests this won't go ahead for a while.
I have an idea! We'll cross the streams!
(Ray groans) "...cross the streams!"
Desktop Synchrotron? No thanks, but I've already got one.
Do you know if they can somehow take a picture of the atoms while it is at a freeze frame? or will the photon cause the atoms to move again?
Yes and yes.
The burst of x-ray/gamma-ray photons will no doubt blast the molecules being observed into their component nuclei and electrons, which will scatter like billiard balls during the "break".
But it's a very SHORT flash. You get your "picture" of where they were when the flash hit, by the scattering of the incident massless photons, before the particles with rest-mass have a chance to go somewhere else.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I've got a real one in the next building!
That one won't fit on a pistol grip - or even a tank-based mobile platform. What kind of raygun is that?
Fixed installation beam weapons might be OK for shooting down incoming stuff. But you need to go on the offense if you want to finish the war with a win.
B-)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Could this be a path toward SMALL SCALE implementation of the "energy amplifier" credited to Carlo Rubia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_amplifier?
Acording to the cited atical, a major engineering/cost challege in trying the Rubia's idea out in the real world is
the need for a particle accelerator to excite the process...
Even the Greens are starting to reconsider nuclear energy, and there is more Thorium (with, I read, less weapons potential) than Uranium.
Thanks for considering this layman's question!
I doubt plasma wakefield accelerators will help the Energy Amplifier much. The EA needs a huge proton flux, a truly industrial-strength power. The point is that such a process is efficient only on a large scale.
Good start for this guy. His paper shows spontaneous rather than SASE free electron laser (FEL) radiation (look it up). Gain is needed next. It's not desktop, it takes a full lab or two, but this is much cheaper than billion dollar synchrotrons like the Advnced Light Source. You guys should read more about this stuff. http://loasis.lbl.gov/
"Guess there's no point worrying about it now."
"Why worry? Each of us is wearing an unlicensed nuclear accelerator on his back."
Reading this, I immediately set out to try to duplicate their setup. I lined up my keychain laser pointer with a couple of fridge magnets and ate some Taco Bell to give myself lots of gas, and I didn't see ONE synchrotroned particle!
Busted!
Serving your airship needs since 1995.
The Molecular Man!
I'm not sure Wakefield needs any acceleration; his knuckle is tricky enough as it is.