X-rays
Over the years, X-rays have been used in numerous areas in the scientific field. Since their discovery, X-rays have been used to diagnose diseases in hospitals, check for broken bones, spot pneumonia, kill cancer cells, and explore the cosmos. While X-rays have revolutionized medical diagnosis due to their many advantages, they also have their dangers and defects that limit their usability. One such problem that was discovered based on the initial observations while using them is their instability. However, as described below, the scientific method has been used to develop new super stable x-rays that improve their efficiency.
According to an article on Phys.org, X-ray laser facilities such as the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) enable scientists to examine how nature behaves at ultra-fast and ultra-small scales. However, the X-ray pulses produced by these machines are unstable and keep on fluctuating. As a result, they produce a lot of background noise, which negatively impacts the signals during high-resolution experiments. This understanding formed the hypothesis that inspired the beginning of the research. The scientific method is being used to solve this problem.
The article states that scientists at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in California have developed a new way of producing brighter X-rays that are also more coherent and stable. This by ensuring that the rays have wavelengths that are more in sync with one another. The article further states that the new discoveries will help increase data collection efficiency and facilitate new kinds of experiments in the health sector.
Various tests have been carried out to improve the quality of the pulses, and thus improve the performance of LCLS X-ray machines. According to Zhen Zhang, one of the scientists working on the project, the ultimate goal was to try and find a way of making the X-ray pulses be similar to the pulses produced by a classical optical laser, which are both coherent and stable. The initial experiments focused on using a concept referred to as self-seeding, whereby noisy pulses are filtered to produce a highly stable beam.
After a couple of tests, the scientists realized that they needed to adopt an entirely different approach. As the lead scientist, Erik Hemsing, notes, instead of filtering the long noisy pulses as they did in the conventional self-seeding method, they instead opted to first produce ultra-short coherent pulses that were then stretched and amplified. This way, the scientists were able to enhance the coherence and the stability of the pulses at the same time. This concept was based on the understanding that ultra-short pulses are much less noisy as well as more coherent than long pulses. However, the scientists encountered another problem. The ultra-short pulses do not carry much energy, which renders them unusable for certain high-resolution applications. Ultimately, they were able to come up with a way of filtering these ultra-short pulses and amplify them by a factor of 10,000 to make them ideal for use in all scientific applications.
The scientists hope to advance their research and extend their discoveries by producing even more energetic hard X-rays. The article notes that although this will take time, it will enable them to better understand the physics of electrons, atoms, and photons, and their application in enhancing the X-rays technology. In conclusion, the article highlights a classic example of how the scientific method was used to identify problems through observation. The problem was then used to craft a hypothesis that the scientists set out to prove using actual data. The result of the experiment is the development of more stable X-rays which provide a clearer view of the structural makeup of various objects, including human body organs.