Science

Scientists Create Super-Thin Flowing Water that Shimmers Like Soap Bubbles

SLAC: The liquid sheets – less than 100 water molecules thick – will let researchers probe chemical, physical and biological processes, and even the nature of water itself, in a way they could never do before.

This tiny glass chip creates super-thin sheets of flowing liquid for X-ray experiments at SLAC’s X-ray laser, LCLS. A stream of liquid flowing through the middle channel is shaped by flows of gas coming in from the channels on either side. (Dawn Harmer/SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory.)

Water is an essential ingredient for life as we know it, making up more than half of the adult human body and up to 90 percent of some other living things. But scientists trying to examine tiny biological samples with certain wavelengths of light haven’t been able to observe them in their natural, watery environments because the water absorbs too much of the light. Now there’s a way around that problem: A team led by scientists at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory turned tiny liquid jets that carry samples into the path of an X-ray beam into thin, free-flowing sheets, 100 times thinner than any produced before.

They’re so thin that X-rays pass […]

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Scientists Create Super-Thin Flowing Water that Shimmers Like Soap Bubbles
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Scientists trying to examine tiny biological samples with certain wavelengths of light haven't been able to see them in their watery environments because the water absorbs too much of the light. Now liquid sheets less than 100 molecules thick will let researchers probe many processes, even the nature of water itself.
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Science Sprints
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