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World's First X-Ray Laser Goes Live
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."
Can it give me super powers if it accidentally hits me?!
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.
I seem to recall that they fired up an X-Ray laser as part of the tests for the Strategic Defense Initiative. The whole thing was powered by an atomic blast, so it was kind of a one-shot deal.
If they had actually deployed lasers like that one, I think I would have been more afraid of our missile defense than of any missiles.
Ronnie promised us that SDI would make nuclear weapons "impotent and obsolete". I think he didn't quite understand how hard that is.
to give humans superpowers, without the risk of giving others nearby cancer, or the need to steal some nuclear waste from a local nuclear plant.
Right now X-Ray sources are quite random and waste _a lot_ of energy. A nice pencil thin directional beam would do wonders for CT scanners.
----
Go canucks, habs, and sens!
I'd pay money for that...
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Strangest acronym evar.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
...with remaining head.
How else would Honour Harrington defeat the peeps?
Yay me!
So when will it be small enough to fit on a shark's head?
Can I suggest that they put this thing in the belly of an airforce drone and attempt to cook a tub of popcorn on the ground? Perhaps in my professor's house?
The only question I have involves sharks, and when.
My shopping list:
30 x-ray lasers
29 sharks
Can it be used for more accurate photolithography?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
And it runs RTEMS. There are a lot of RTEMS physics applications thanks to the EPICS community. Great group of talented folks.
How long until Sony announces their new 'Exray' drive, the successor to Bluray--capable of holding 60 petabytes on a single disk? :P
"I Don't Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist"
Why don't they focus on a powerful laser to destroy bad asteroids?
-- Simon said: Die!
The first x-ray laser was part of SDI research in the early 80's. Click here and here for more info.
Don't let Abaddon find out about it! He'll destroy billions in his quest for rushing human supremacy over the Galactic Milieu!!
Only his brother can save us!
it is only an acronym if it is pronounced like a work (ie RADAR, LASER). LCLS is just an abbreviation.
> get all the fags in one area and see if you can fry them off the face of the planet. faggots are useless.
Interestingly enough, if you ROT13 this message, it reads "OH GOD I CRAVE HOT HARD THROBBING COCKS IN MY MOUTH PLEASE DON'T TELL THE GUN CLUB".
As far as I can recall, while some work (and a lot of promotion) was done on bomb-pumped X-ray lasers for SDI, there wasn't any experiment that definitively demonstrated the effect.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Defense_Initiative#X-ray_laser
Wikipedia seems to agree, for what it's worth. I wish all my books weren't in storage - I'm sure this is mentioned in one of Richard Rhodes' books on the bomb, somewhere.
appropriately named. Only "cluelesslollypop" would be more accurate.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
X-ray lasers sing this song
doo-dah, doo-dah
Blasting holes 'bout nine miles long
oh, de-do-dah-day
Gonna recharge all night
Gonna align all day
You're standing right in the beam line now
You better get out of the way
(And if anyone can tell me who that's attributable to, you'll be my new Internet Best Friend.)
I wonder how long it will take for all the advances produced by the millions and millions of dollars and careers spent will be squandered by crappy information security and shipped to china for 37 cents in long distance charges.
So what I'm really wanting to know is how long until someone sells a cheap Chinese knock-off online? Fuck blue lasers! I can imagine loads of fun pointing this at people in the mall, during baseball games, at the movies, etc.
it is only an acronym if it is pronounced like a work (ie RADAR, LASER). LCLS is just an abbreviation.
I can haz LOLCLASS?
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
(Looks at 2 mile long accelerator): "We're going to need a bigger shark."
Have gnu, will travel.
but not the first by a few years.
The first X-ray laser is in Hamburg: Flash. And it is operational since 2005 open for outside users!!!
http://zms.desy.de/press/background_information/photon_science/flash/index_eng.html
Come on guys!!! Research before saying first!!!
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, 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.
I'd like 100 square miles of thin film solar cells please....
The next phone call goes to SpaceX.
An Evil Overlord's work is never done.
"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."
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
I hadn't known there were so many idiots in the world until I started using the Internet -Stanislaw Lem
...do you want sharks to have a targeting laser?
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Yes indeed! You will become Atom Man! aerobic exercise Your special power will be that you can turn yourself into a cloud of
Dude, the question is, "What WON'T they blow up with it?"
Your Momma!...There are not enough explosives in the UNIVERSE! *sigh!*
*Disclaimer*
I do not know your Mom, and meant no direct disrespect...this was meant to be an 'Obligatory, but inane' post....YMMV, however!
Never discount the potential of 'bomb-pumped LASER weapons', if we ever figure it out....
Your Momma, my Momma, EVERYONE'S Momma will be at risk.
Even M.A.D.(Mutually Assured Destruction) has it's practical limits for rational beings. Let's hope humans belong to that group!
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
So when are we going to start using sharks for precision dental X-rays?
What, no comments yet?
I remember, half a century ago, just walkin' in to a local shoe store, with a coupla pals. We'd have fun playing with the shoe-store X-ray machine.
"Wow! watch me wiggle my toes !" etc etc
And then would go home, and later that night in bed, after Mom or Dad told me to turn the light off, I would read my Captain Marvel comics to the light of my glowing feet...
Then those evil machines got banned.
Strangely, all my kids seem to have assumed adult-hood without... uhhh.. "mutations".
We were just lucky I guess.
And my feet are OK. 'Cept when I go barefoot in cold weather...
Jeez. 50 years later. I can still run a daily 10Km on those feet. Is there something that I don't know?
.
- aqk
F U
Watch out, dont visit the above! It's a trap!
"It's on the boundary between the impossible and possible"
I call it... the possimpible.
http://www.barneysvideoresume.com/
It will fsck you up. Unless you're running linux - then it's just really annoying.
Do you even know anything about perl? -- AC Replying to Tom Christiansen post.
"X-Rasor". Say it out loud. Doesn't it just sound awesome?
Space game using normal deck of cards: http://BattleCards.org
"X-Raser". Say it out loud. Doesn't it just sound awesome?
Fixed that for me.
Space game using normal deck of cards: http://BattleCards.org
Nice.... no script, firefox on my mac... i clicked the link and was unaffected. if clicking on the link fucks you up then I just have to laugh.
so I thought x-rays were not visible light?? How the hell do you get a visible stream off of x-rays? I mean really!! WTF!
Do not try to comprehend visions created by staring into X-Ray laser with remaining lobe.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
"Free" your "electrons"!! Your "accelerated electrons" "forced to move" in an "excited coherent emission," "thus producing a very short" "beam". "These guys had it right on." This is the "most difficult...source that has ever been turned on." "This tool," "expected to be enormous," will be important to the future as the microscope has been in the past."
A Maser?
X-ray (gamma-ray) lasers are trivial and have been trialled during the 1980's Reagan's SDI Start Wars program. It only takes a nuclear bomb, surrounded by radially placed iron rods. When the nuke detonates, the iron rods evaporate in microseconds while producing powerful, coherent gamma lasershots from their tip. This was to be used in a network of one-time use battle satellites, which would destroy dozens of incoming USSR ballistic missiles in a single firing.
This method was invented by the famous jewish war-mongering mad scientist Edward Teller, but eventually costs and the frightening aspect of further escalating nuclear weapons into outer space crushed the project.
Semiconductor circuit size is related to wavelength in photo-lithography. Faster CPUs?
There are problems with this idea.
(1) Its justification after the fact. No credible proof has been provided that this was ever the plan: rather, the Soviet Union collapsed economically,
in a way unexpected by the CIA and the intelligence community, then the SDI folks say "See ? that was our Sekrit plan all along". If it was the
plan, it shouldn't have been a suprise.
(2) SDI didn't change soviet spending. They did practically no SDI work (in comparison to the US), and Soviet military spending didn't change.
Counter-measures to SDI are / were far cheaper than SDI itself: SDI meant spending billions on new tracking and laser developments to appear
credible (even if no-one involved believed it would work); countering it meant a few dummy balloons and chaff. It risked bankrupting the US
far before bankrupting the SU.
(3) Not only did Soviet spending not change, the CIA knew that it didn't change, and yet SDI continued. A very expensive, failed, policy was continued
in order to keep money flowing into certain companies. It was a pork barrel.
The soviet economic collapse was triggered by OPEC, not SDI. When Saudi Arabia et al opened stopcocks and flooded the world with cheap oil,
the Soviet export economy collapsed.
Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist
I wounder if it could be used to make a multi tera holographic x-ray storage device...
Anyone who still falls for that ancient LM link deserves it.
While this is the first "hard" X-Ray laser, there have been lasers producing (softer) x-rays far longer.
When I was in college studying physics, we went on a field-trip to the FOM institute near Utrecht, the Netherlands. Even back then, they had a FEL operational that they told could produce coherent light in a large range of wavelengths. If I remember correctly, this range extended into the soft x-ray range.
He who laughs last, thinks slowest.
Numerous places have X Ray "lasers" including SLAC. These aren't true lasers since the mechanism that generates the coherent pulse of light doesn't do so via stimulated emission (where a cascade of photons generated by electrons dropping to a lower potential result in a pulse or beam of extremely coherent light, same phase, direction, etc). Packets of electronics are pushed at near light speeds through magnetic fields that bend or wiggle the packet, generating a pulse of very coherent light (bending the path of an electron causes a photon to be emitted) that compares well in coherence to laser generated light. What appears to be new is that the frequency of X Rays is in the upper limits of the X Ray spectrum. The higher frequency will be useful for even finer details of molecular reactions, internal cell processes, and other remarkable research that is being done with these light sources.
the better question is why isn't it on a blacklist?
I herd you like light so we put a beam in your beam...
It will be better to purchase from an owner who is a good farmer and a good builder.
Before startup, the doctor yells, " I'm ChArGin MaH LaZeR!!!!!!!" (Not all caps)
Sig? No thanks. I don't smoke.
meaning, it's the second !
The soviet economic collapse was triggered by OPEC, not SDI. When Saudi Arabia et al opened stopcocks and flooded the world with cheap oil, the Soviet export economy collapsed.
And why did OPEC flood the world with cheap oil? The answer is clear: SDI! :-)
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Didn't the earliest research into "lasers" involve microwave radiation, thus the first acronym being M.A.S.E.R, not L.A.S.E.R.? So shouldn't this be X.R.A.S.E.R or X.A.S.E.R.? I understand that X-Rays are still light, but not visible light. But if the differentiation between maser and laser existed, with laser solely belonging to visible light, I'd like to see this tradition upheld.
"Love heals scars love left." -- Henry Rollins
I did! I did! I did tell the Gun Club. Oh dear me, what now?
Semiconductor circuit size is related to the wavelength used in photo-lithography. Smaller circuit sizes?
Awesome! I was getting so sick and tired of proprietary and closed source Lasers.
Lasers should be free as in speech.
All users should be able to change them for their needs. Closed source lasers are inmoral!
Can someone with the knowledge of diffraction theory explain how this would help in solving the phase problem? The detector still does not record the phase information, so how is having coherent beam different from using regular monochromatic source?