Latest Synchrotron radiation Stories
Astronomers studying the Vela pulsar wind nebula with ESA's INTEGRAL observatory have successfully resolved its morphology in the hard X-ray band, for the first time. This pulsar-powered nebula is the most extended individual source yet observed at these energies. The study exploited a special imaging technique to reveal a new component of the source that likely consists of highly energetic electrons that have escaped from the core of the nebula in the last few thousand years. One of the...
Astrophysicists have detected pulsed gamma-ray emissions from the Crab pulsar with energies that exceed 100 billion electron-volts (GeV). These gamma-ray pulses surpass what current theoretical models of pulsars can explain. The pulses were detected by the VERITAS telescope array at the Whipple Observatory in Arizona. Nepomuk Otte, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Santa Cruz, said some researchers had told him he was crazy to even look for pulsar emission in...
A breakthrough in understanding materials for next-generation electronic devices An international team of scientists has developed a novel X-ray technique for imaging atomic displacements in materials with unprecedented accuracy. They have applied their technique to determine how a recently discovered class of exotic materials – multiferroics – can be simultaneously both magnetically and electrically ordered. Multiferroics are also candidate materials for new classes of...
Researchers can now see objects more precisely and faster at the nanoscale due to utilising the full color spectrum of synchrotron light, opening the way for faster 3D nanoimaging.This new methodology will provide for enhanced nanoimaging for studying bio samples for medical research, improved drug development and advanced materials for engineering.Using the Advanced Photon Source, a synchrotron facility in Chicago, USA, researchers from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coherent X-ray Science...
Scientists from Finland and France have developed a new synchrotron X-ray technique that may revolutionize the chemical analysis of rare materials like meteoric rock samples or fossils. The results have been published on 29 May 2011 in Nature Materials as an advance online publication.Life, as we know it, is based on the chemistry of carbon and oxygen. The three-dimensional distribution of their abundance and chemical bonds has been difficult to study up to now in samples where these elements...
ESA's Integral gamma-ray observatory has spotted extremely hot matter just a millisecond before it plunges into the oblivion of a black hole. But is it really doomed? These unique observations suggest that some of the matter may be making a great escape. No one would want to be so close to a black hole. Just a few hundred kilometers away from its deadly surface, space is a maelstrom of particles and radiation. Vast storms of particles are falling to their doom at close to the speed of...
A new form of X-ray imaging technology and a nearly 100 million year old fossil have helped researchers gain a better understanding of how snakes lost their legs through evolution, according to a study published Tuesday in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.In the study, Alexandra Houssaye from the Museum National d'Histoire Naturelle (MNHN) in Paris and colleagues used synchrotron X-ray machines at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF) to create 3D images of a 95 million...
The Crab Nebula, one of our best-known and most stable neighbors in the winter sky, is shocking scientists with a propensity for fireworks"”gamma-ray flares set off by the most energetic particles ever traced to a specific astronomical object. The discovery, reported today by scientists working with two orbiting telescopes, is leading researchers to rethink their ideas of how cosmic particles are accelerated."We were dumbfounded," said Roger Blandford, who directs the Kavli Institute for...
New PTB instrument measures the quality of the mirrors for the X-ray telescope IXOÂ It is to become the largest X-ray telescope ever: The International X-Ray Observatory (IXO), which has been planned in a cooperation between NASA, ESA and Japan's Aerospace Exploration Agency JAXA, will be launched into space in 2021 and provide the world with brand new information about black holes and, thus, about the origin of the universe. Its dimensions are gigantic: The surface of the mirror alone,...
Scientists for the first time have dived into the effect that an intense X-ray free electron laser (XFEL) has on materials.Using the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) facility at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, Lawrence Livermore scientists probed nitrogen gas at X-ray energies of up to 8 keV (kiloelectronvolts), the highest X-ray energy ever used at an XFEL, to see how it behaved when the laser hit it.The photoluminescence-based pulse-energy detector allowed the team to study the...
