Scientists Just Produced A "Molecular Black Hole" Using X-Rays – Futurism

In BriefResearchers at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory weresurprised when they turned a molecule into a an atom-sucking blackhole by blasting it with the most powerful X-ray laser beam in theworld. Stripping It Bare

Essentially, a black hole is an object whose gravity is so strong that it sucks in surrounding objects. Thats what became of a small molecule that researchers from the Stanford operatedSLAC National Accelerator Laboratory blasted with the worlds most powerful X-ray laser. The molecule turned into an atom-sucking molecular black hole.

Worry not, however, as such an effect requires an X-ray laser thats a hundred times more intense than what you would get if you focused all the sunlight that hits the Earths surface onto a thumbnail, Sebastien Boutetsaid in a press release. Thats how strong the Coherent X-ray Imaging instrument used for this experiment is, said Boutet, who is a co-author of the studythe team published in the journal Nature. Its capable of releasing hard X-rays by using the highest possible energies available from the equipment.

The researchers used special mirrors to focus the X-ray beam into a very small spot, which was a little bit over 100 nanometers in diameter, to check three types of samples with heavy atoms: individual xenon atoms (with 54 electrons each) and two types of molecules with single iodine atoms (containing 53 electrons each). They didnt expect the extreme effect the X-ray laser would actually have onthese samples, which surpassed their calculations based on previous studies.

When blasted with the X-ray laser beam from the Coherent X-ray Imaging instrument, the molecules iodine atom lost more than 50 electrons with just 30 femtoseconds or millionths of a billionth of a second. The void that was left then pulled in electrons from the rest of the molecule, which it also blasted out before finally blowing up.

We think the effect was even more important in the larger molecule than in the smaller one, but we dont know how to quantify it yet, lead researcher Artem Rudenko explained in the press release. We estimate that more than 60 electrons were kicked out, but we dont actually know where it stopped because we could not detect all the fragments that flew off as the molecule fell apart to see how many electrons were missing. This is one of the open questions we need to study.

That effect, of course, wasnt something the researchers intended. However, they did learn a very important lesson from it. Using X-rays with ultrahigh intensities is necessary forexperiments that try to image individual biological objects such as bacteria and virusesat a high resolution.At the same time, its also useful in studying the charge dynamics of complex molecules and to understand how matter behaves in extreme conditions.

For any type of experiment you do that focuses intense X-rays on a sample, you want to understand how it reacts to the X-rays, Daniel Rolles, who also headed the study, said in the press release. This paper shows that we can understand and model the radiation damage in small molecules, so now we can predict what damage we will get in other systems.

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Scientists Just Produced A "Molecular Black Hole" Using X-Rays - Futurism