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First-of-its-Kind Hard X-ray Free-Electron Laser Images Intact Viruses
Zothecula writes "In a paper published in the current edition of Nature, an international team of scientists describe how they obtained the world's first single-shot images of intact viruses – a technology that could ultimately lead to moving video of molecules, viruses and live microbes. Another paper by the same team describes how they were also able to successfully utilize a new shortcut for determining the 3D structures of proteins. Both advances were achieved using the world's first hard X-ray free-electron laser – the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) – which scientists hope could revolutionize the study of life."
How about a link to the paper?
This post was generated by a Cadre of Uber Monkeys for Monkey-Man2000 (603495).
Who cares about what happens to them after the burst
While a movie of bursting viruses might be interesting, it won't be as scientifically useful as a movie of a virus that is (mostly) unaffected by having the movie taken of it.
This sort of stuff is like determining where a basketball is by throwing tennis balls at it and seeing where they land. You can only throw a few before the basketball becomes so affected by the tennis balls that you don't know where it is anymore (or how fast it's moving)...
That’s still long enough to cause its subjects to vaporize , but that doesn’t happen until after their pictures have been snapped.
So that means that the TSA will not be using hard X-rays . . . um, doesn't it?
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
I-just wanted to Hard free-comment on-this-story with intact-hyphens.
William of Ockham had no beard. The most likely explanation is that it was chewed off by squirrels every morning.
I am a physicist-in-training (grad student), and when I first heard of "free electron lasers" I was extremely impressed, because getting electrons into a multi-keV energy state that can lase without atoms involved sounded nearly impossible. Turns out it is, because these are not actually "lasers" the sense of Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation. There is no population inversion as in real lasers.
The name of this specific FEL, the "Linac Coherent Light Source", is a much more correct name. They shoot electrons through a wiggler, and as they wiggle they emit coherent photons. Coherency is they key property of laser light, but the name refers to the method of light creation more than the actual output. I don't know why the x-ray community has felt the need to use this misleading name.
Don't Bogart the fish sticks
Here's a video (animation) from Stanford explaining how the LCLC works.
http://lcls.slac.stanford.edu/AnimationViewLCLS.aspx