The World's Most Powerful X-Ray Laser Beam Creates 'Molecular Black Hole'
Wednesday, May 31, 2017 - 14:02
in Physics & Chemistry
When scientists at the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory focused the full intensity of the world's most powerful X-ray laser on a small molecule, they got a surprise: A single laser pulse stripped all but a few electrons out of the molecule's biggest atom from the inside out, leaving a void that started pulling in electrons from the rest of the molecule, like a black hole gobbling a spiraling disk of matter.