Crazy fast X-ray laser catches chemical reactions in the act
06 Jul 2015 • engadget.comScientists at the Department of Energy’s SLAC laboratory have taken a “molecular movie” of a chemical reaction for the first time. The results of their research could give new insights into to how chemical bonds form, helping researchers better understand biological processes. To give you an idea of the difficulty of the feat, the critical part of the reaction – the breaking apart of a ring-shaped gas molecule – takes a mere 200 femtoseconds (quadrillionths of a second). To record such a rapid process, the researchers used the two mile long Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) to fire X-ray laser pulses a mere 25 quadrillionths of a second in duration.
A two mile long X-ray laser? The stuff we have today is just crazy.