A sleek, subterranean X-ray laser to be unveiled on Friday in Germany, by far the most powerful in the world, has scientists in a dozen fields jostling to train its mighty beam on their projects. The European X-Ray Free Electron Laser, or XFEL, is lodged in a series of tunnels up to 38 metres underground near the city of Hamburg. Here's how it works: To generate X-ray flashes, bundles of electrons are first accelerated to high energies near the speed of light. The electrons gradually gather into a multitude of ultra-thin discs, allowing them to emit their light in sync and produce extremely short, intense X-ray flashes of laser light. Spearheaded by Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron, the Hamburg-based research centre that built FLASH, the European XFEL was born of an international agreement inked in 2009.

Source: The Local August 30, 2017 16:52 UTC