
The World’s Most Powerful X-Ray Laser Beam Creates ‘Molecular Black Hole’ (2017) - peter_d_sherman
https://www6.slac.stanford.edu/news/2017-05-31-world%E2%80%99s-most-powerful-x-ray-laser-beam-creates-%E2%80%98molecular-black-hole%E2%80%99.aspx
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peter_d_sherman
>"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._

Within 30 femtoseconds – millionths of a billionth of a second – the molecule
lost more than 50 electrons, far more than scientists anticipated based on
earlier experiments using less intense beams or isolated atoms.

Then it blew up."

