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September 25, 2020 07:00 am

'Extremely Brilliant Source' X-Rays Set To Revolutionize Science

Rose Pastore reporting via Gizmodo: A new way of producing powerful X-ray beams -- the brightest on Earth -- is now making it possible to create 3D images of matter at astounding resolutions. This "Extremely Brilliant Source" officially opened last month at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility in France, and scientists are already using it to study the coronavirus behind covid-19. These X-ray beams will image the interiors of fossils, brains, batteries, and countless other interesting items down to the atomic scale, revealing unprecedented information and supercharging scientific research. A typical medical X-ray, like you would get for a broken bone, can show doctors details about your particular fracture and the tissue around it. X-rays penetrate the body and are absorbed at different rates by different tissue; once they've passed through you, they hit a detector, creating the familiar black-and-white X-ray image. The Extremely Brilliant Source produces X-rays 10 trillion times more powerful than those used in hospitals. With such a beam, scientists could create a 3D image of your broken bone so detailed that they could see the individual atoms in the blood cells surrounding your fracture. Of course, you wouldn't want to be hit with this particular beam -- the dose of radiation would be fatal. The possibilities that the Extremely Brilliant Source opens up feel endless. One area that particularly excites Francesco Sette, director general of the ESRF, is research into the structure and functioning of brains, which could eventually enable brain-like electronics. "It would be a major revolution, not only for neuroscience, but also for all those applications that are coming up to use possibly the human brain architecture for a new generation of devices," he said.

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