X-ray Generator Fits In the Palm of Your Hand 32
ananyo writes "Scientists have reported the first tabletop source of ultra-short, laser-like pulses of low energy, or 'soft,' X-rays. The light, capable of probing the structure and dynamics of molecules (abstract), was previously available only at large, billion-dollar national facilities such as synchrotrons or free-electron lasers, where competition for use of the equipment is fierce. The new device, by husband-and-wife team Margaret Murnane and Henry Kapteyn based at JILA in Boulder, Colorado, might soon lie within the grasp of a university laboratory budget — perhaps allowing them to one day be as common in labs as electron microscopes are."
How time flies (Score:5, Insightful)
perhaps allowing them to one day be as common in labs as electron microscopes are.
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And back in my day, electron microscopes were big-ticket gear that only a few big labs could afford.
Now, get off of my lawn!
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Re:Proteome (Score:4, Insightful)
Not crystallography, but holography (Score:3, Insightful)
This is a fully coherent laser -- not just an X-ray source. So, you would not be scattering photons the way crystallography is done -- you would be taking holographic photos of the protein molecules.
And yes, these are soft X-rays now -- but this is and brand new technique, and it appears to be very scaleable. Hard X-rays might not be too far off.