XFEL: UK signs up to super X-ray laser machine.
The UK has formally joined the European XFEL, a super-bright X-ray laser.
The machine, which is sited in Germany, produces high-energy pulses that are focussed on a target at the end of a 3.4km-long tunnel complex.
These X-ray shots instantly destroy that target but just as they do so they also capture its deepest structure.
Scientists will use the machine to make movies of biological and chemical reactions as they happen at the atomic scale – among myriad applications.
New drugs and new types of materials with novel properties are almost certain to follow from these intricate and detailed investigations.
Dr Allen Orville, who leads the team set up to prepare British scientists to use the facility, says XFELs represent a paradigm shift for research.
“And it’s really true: you blow up the sample with the X-ray pulse,” he chuckles. “But that’s OK because the data is in the X-ray photons and they>>
CREDIT: Jonathan Amos, Science correspondent, BBC
