Forget transparent aluminum. Researchers make iron invisible to X-rays

honestly guys..

this article went way, WAAAY above my head.

just happened to stumble across it, glanced over it and made for an interesting read.

so i thought i'd share with some of the more techsavy members on ATS.

Illustration of the principle of optical resonance, where thin sheets of iron can be made transparent using X-ray lasers.

Transparency is generally a property of a material's density or crystal structure, and varies depending on the wavelength of light. However, transparency can also be achieved by exploiting quantum interference between energy level transitions in atoms. Up until now, such transparency has been confined to optical wavelengths, due to the typical energies of atomic transitions.

Transitioning between energy levels within atomic nuclei (instead of electron transitions) involves much higher energies, corresponding to hard X-ray frequencies. Ralf Röhlsberger, Hans-Christian Wille, Kai Schlage, and Balaram Sahoo of the Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron (DESY) in Germany have induced transparency in iron-57 nuclei, using an X-ray laser to drive the nuclei to resonance. The experiment not only made the iron nuclei nearly vanish, but also slowed the X-ray photons to a small fraction of their usual speed.

This result holds out the tantalizing possibility of quantum optics in the nuclear regime, providing us new ways of manipulating light at far higher energies than have previously been possible. The basic technique is termed electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT). It involves balancing the absorption of light by an atom or nucleus with a corresponding emission, which makes it appear as though the material is nearly absent.

anybody out here that can translate this into something more simple ?

source

mmmm... em waves.
This isn't very cool unless you're doing that type science. Not many(any) practical applications.

reply to post by kn0wh0w


Very interesting.
First application would be a simpler spectrometry for x-ray.
And as a second a lensing system for x-ray.
The method used now for focussing x-rays is quit expensive, with very slant mirrors, each specially curved.

Now for the big one, why would an upgrade of this method not work for visible wavelengths.
So that metals become really transparent, this is very often described in the story's of ET abductees that were taken aboard.

i don't see a link. I would assume that when you bounce a strong ion charge in and out of iron, it would momentarily become superconductive at the peak of each cycle, thus allowing polarization with xrays when it's atoms work like a lens.

I think this paragraph explains it best.

Much as a plucked string has places of total constructive interference (antinodes) and total destructive interference (nodes), the standing light wave will have points where the the photons reinforce each other or cancel each other out. By arranging materials at these points of interference, the transition between energy levels can be managed in such a way to ensure that the emission and absorption of photons are balanced.

Because x-ray energy which is emitted (to simplify, call it reflected) is at the opposite phase of the x-ray energy which is projected, the x-ray energy which is absorbed by the atomic nucleus "dissappears" as if the nucleus was not there.

It's a very cool application of quantum mechanics at high energy levels but for any practical use...not so much.

The iron itself is of the relatively rare isotope 57Fe, which has a special nuclear transition that makes it suitable for this work. The cooperation between the layers is also critical; one must be precisely at the node of the standing wave of laser light, and the other at the antinode. Shifting or removing one layer even slightly makes the effect disappear, ruining the transparency. Airplanes and adolescent wizards will not be made to vanish by this technique, in other words.

arstechnica.com...

X-Rays make everything in its path conducting.
High voltage pulls out particles from an electrode, say neutrinos, and
sends them into a target plate, called second electrode, at a 45 degree
angle that sends out the X-Rays.
It might be safer using only one electrode however that not the way
we do things. Van der Graff voltage was tried at one time but was
too unreliable and the Tesla coil powers the voltage surge on all
X-Ray machines now.
So if thin iron and aluminum are X-Rayed then their electrical activity
matches that of space, or the Tesla medium of independent carriers,
and the laser light can pass through.