X-Ray Laser Fires Most Powerful Beam Ever

Lasers fire beams of light that can cut through steel or etch microchip patterns, depending on the power and wavelength. Now one team of scientists at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in Menlo Park, Calif., led by Nina Rohringer, has created an X-ray laser that fires more energy, with a more precise wavelength, than any previous model. The results are being published in the journal Nature.

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X-ray lasers are already used in spectroscopy, as a way to look into the depths of molecules like DNA. Back in the 1980s the “Star Wars” missile defense program even floated the idea of X-ray lasers as weapons, powered by nuclear bombs. (The idea was never implemented.) This laser will let scientists see things smaller than ever before.

A laser works by exciting atoms in a crystal, gas or liquid, pushing the electrons nearest to the nucleus into higher energy levels -- a process called “pumping.” When the electrons return to their ground states, neighboring atoms stimulate each other and they emit light of a specific wavelength -- ultimately the laser.

Most lasers, like the ones in CD players and laser pointers, use visible light or electricity to excite the atoms.

But getting a laser beam to work in the X-ray part of the spectrum requires tons of energy. Scientists use particle accelerators to push electrons to near the speed of light and then send them through a set of magnets. The electrons emit laser light in the X-ray spectrum.

But Rohringer’s team at SLAC wanted an even more powerful laser than that, so they used the first laser to pump atoms of neon. Hitting the neon with the beam pushed the electrons closest to the nuclei of the atoms into a high-energy state, and generated a beam with a shorter and more precise wavelength. To get an idea, a visible light laser (like a laser pointer) has a wavelength of a few hundred nanometers. The laser beam in Rohringer's experiment had a wavelength of 1.5 nanometers.

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Laser energies are sometimes measured in electron volts, and this one has a range of 1 eV. Previous X-ray lasers had a range of 8-15 eV. That's important when you want to see what atoms are doing, since the smallest object one can see is limited by the wavelength of the light you use to see it. To look at anything smaller than a few nanometers requires a light beam (a laser in this case) with a wavelength that size, and to get a sharp picture, you also need a well-defined wavelength. Previous X-ray lasers had too much “spread.” The neon laser gets past that limitation, allowing for pictures of smaller and faster phenomena.

Images: Greg Stewart, SLAC (top); SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory (bottom)

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World's First Magnetic Soap Invented

Watch out, Mr. Clean. Scientists in the United Kingdom have just created the world's first magnetic soap, and they're saying it could revolutionize the way we take on mega-cleanups.

Chemists have long wanted to achieve magnetic soap that works on an industrial level because it would give environmental remediation experts the ability to precisely control a cleanup using magnetic force. But scientists assumed that mixing metal into detergents wasn't the answer since the metal particles would likely be so isolated within the mixture they wouldn't respond well to a magnet.

Recently, however, several University of Bristol scientists led by chemistry professor Julian Eastoe successfully created working magnetic soap.

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They did it by dissolving iron in a bunch of inert materials similar to those usually found in fabric softener. Adding iron created metallic centers in the soap particles, so that the soap clung to a magnet when it was placed in solution.

Using a magnet, the scientists were able to change characteristics of the soap such as its electrical conductivity and melting point. That responsiveness could be extremely useful for environmental remediation or industrial waste cleanup because the cleaner would only work when needed.

The soap's magnetic properties also make the substance easy to collect and remove once it's been used, according to the scientists. Imagine putting a bunch of this soap on an oil spill and then being able to almost reel it in.

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Eastoe and his colleagues were initially so surprised by the way their soap behaved that they took it to a special research lab in France and put it under a "neutron microscope." Indeed, the iron particles were pulling together. The group published the details of their creation in the chemistry journal Angewandte Chemie (abstract).

Although the magnetic soap is unlikely to be turned into a household cleaner in the near future, Eastoe said in a statement that just proving the soap can be made means potential for commercially available industrial cleaners. For now, the scientists are continuing to work on the soap in the lab. Let's hope they perfect it soon. The list of EPA Superfund sites is still long.

Photo: Unlike normal soaps, the newly created magnetic one on the right sticks to a magnet. Credit: University of Bristol.

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Fabric of the Cosmos Available on DVD

Physicist and popular author Brian Greene hosted a series of four documentaries as part of the American public television station PBS' NOVA science series. The documentary, Fabric of the Cosmos, was based largely on his book of the same name (and also on his 2011 book The Hidden Reality).

In the documentary (and the book), Greene explores the fundamental nature of space, time, and the idea that our observable universe may just be one element in a vastly larger multiverse of parallel universes, using engaging visual demonstrations of some of the most difficult concepts to grasp about the way our universe functions.

To learn more about the documentary - and to learn how you can get the DVD (or even watch it for free online) - check out our full review of NOVA: The Fabric of the Cosmos on DVD.

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Relativity Manga Madness!

It's really amazing to think about what you can get into a comic book, especially if your goal is to teach about scientific concepts. I've highlighted some of the gems that have come my way over in our science comic books list, and I've just had the opportunity to get through a new one: The Manga Guide to Relativity.

Of all of the Manga Guides, this is probably my favorite. It's an incredibly complex topic, but the laid back, visual-based approach in this book really does help to solidify the basic concepts quite well. If you ever find yourself in the need to learn relativity, aren't afraid of a bit of mathematics, and like reading manga, then this book might just be for you.

And, of course, if manga isn't your thing, then you can check out our list of other books about Einstein and relativity.

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Is the Tasmanian Tiger Alive?

Two bike-riding brothers noticed something odd near a creek in northern Tasmania about a week ago. Levi and Jarom Triffitt, members of a stunt trail bike team, found what seemed to be a strange skull and jawbone. They claimed to have found the skull of a strange animal called a thylacine, which looks something like a striped dog.

Why was this such an exciting find? Because the last known thylacine is believed to have died in a zoo in the Tasmanian capital of Hobart on September 7, 1936.

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Finding an intact, recent thylacine skull three-quarters of a century later -- especially out in the open -- would indicate that the animals are indeed still alive and roaming the rural areas of this small island south of Australia.

Some people are convinced that the thylacines still exist, almost like a Tasmanian version of Bigfoot (unlike Bigfoot, of course, there’s hard evidence that thylacines were real). According to thylacine expert Andrew Pask, an Australian zoologist at the University of Melbourne, the fact that the animals no longer exist hasn’t stopped people from seeing them.

In an interview on the MonsterTalk podcast, Pask said that “Since it was named extinct, every year people come forth and say there’s been sightings of the thylacine. But there’s been no evidence ever brought forward for it. A few years ago in Australia there was a magazine that offered a million dollar reward for actual proof of a living thylacine in the wild. So people set off in droves trying to find the thylacine, but nobody was ever able to. Tasmania’s not that big, and even its most inaccessible parts are not that inaccessible... I think if these were out there in the wild they would have been discovered by now.”

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Scientists at Tasmania’s Queen Victoria Museum examined the new skull and identified it as from the canid family -- specifically, a dog. The similarity was not all in the Triffitt brothers’ imaginations; the skulls of the dog-sized marsupial do resemble skulls of domestic dogs. The general public would be unfamiliar with a thylacine skull, and not know, for example, that the thylacine has two more front teeth in the upper jaw than a dog.

The brothers were not completely convinced by the zoologists, insisting that there may have been a mistake and vowing to do their own research. Until they are proven right, it seems that thylacines, like dodos and dinosaurs, are lost to time.

PHOTO: The Thylacine, called the Tasmanian Tiger or Tasmanian Wolf, was a large marsupial. The female pictured here in 1934 was the last one to be captured and died in the old Hobart Zoo, now closed, on September 7th, 1936. Credit: Corbis

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The Physics of Christmas

As a science geek, once of the coolest gifts I ever received was a copy of The Physics of Christmas, given to me by my grandmother only a few years before her death. ?In addition to some discussion of the thermodynamics of cooking turkey and the possible scientific explanation of the Christmas star, there's a great historical analysis of how Christmas has change over the years. One of the most fun parts for me was the chapter which discussed Santa. How could he travel the whole world in one night? Well, physics offers some ideas.

So if you're looking for an unexpected Christmas gift for a physics geek in your life, I think that The Physics of Christmas is a great idea for something to go under the tree.

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Edison Bests Jobs as Top Inventor in Poll

Sometimes it’s nice to hear what The Youth think. This year’s Lemelson-MIT Invention Index , released today, does just that. There were a couple of things in there that caught my eye.

The first item turned my head, given the recent untimely death of Steve Jobs. The above infographic shows who the 1,000 respondents of the survey, who were between 16 and 25, thought was the greatest innovator of all time.

As you can see, it’s not Jobs. Mark Zuckerberg did make the list, shockingly (to me, anyway), but with 3 percent.

As for what makes an inventor, according to a Lemelson-MIT press release, “More than half (55 percent) of young Americans cite creativity as the quality that best describes an inventor. Fewer think inventors are people who are problem solvers (24 percent), intelligent (13 percent), employed in a technical field (4 percent) or nerdy or quirky (3 percent).”

The other part of the survey I found interesting was the below bar chart, showing which inventions from this century respondents thought might be gone relatively soon. Over 30 percent gave MP3 players and DVRs only 15 years before we’ll have moved on to something more helpful. Though what’s more helpful than a DVR?

One more little footnote from Lemelson-MIT: Just “… 16 percent (of respondents) see a downside to the proliferation of technology, noting that basic skills like grammar and spelling have slipped.

About the 16th annual Lemelson-MIT Invention Index: The index is an annual survey “that gauges Americans’ perceptions about invention and innovation. The 2012 Lemelson-MIT Invention Index survey was conducted by Kelton Research between December 9-15, 2011, using an Internet-based, multiple-choice format. The sample size of 1,000 respondents, ages 16-25, at the 95 percent confidence level would equate to + or – 3.1 percent margin of error had this been a random sample."

Images: Lemelson-MIT

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