[perihelion]

First X-ray laser's early success brings approval for next-phase facility
Can you say, "AWESOME!!!"

[watsisname]

The laser's ultra-fast, ultra-bright X-rays give scientists the ability to visualize matter on the atomic scale, where the action is measured in quadrillionths of a second.

That's friggin' impressive.

[SpardaSon21]

How soon until we can blow stuff up with it?

[Liberator]

whur's muh beamz!

[Nuclear1]

IMMA FIRING MAH LAZER photoshops in 3..2...

[FreeSpaceFreak]

According to the Subach HL-7 tech description, it's called a "xaser". Sounds good. X-ray Amplification through Stimulated Emission of Radiation

[perihelion]

Uhh.  All respect to  , but they hardly coined the idea for an x-ray laser.  I'm pretty sure the idea even predates Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, who more or less made the idea fameous in the 1960's and 70's in Niven's "Known Space" universe and a few of their collaborations.

[Nuke]

havent xasers been around for awhile?

[karajorma]

Yes. But America's SDI program used nuke detonations to generate the beam. Maybe this is the first permanent version.

[Kosh]

I dont think SDI ever got them to work properly, which would explain why that approach was abandoned.

[karajorma]

IIRC they worked. They just weren't very powerful.

[Aardwolf]

But America's SDI program used nuke detonations to generate the beam.

Eh? I don't think we ever had laserhead / Yamato cannon tech... yet.

[karajorma]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Defense_Initiative#X-ray_laser

[watsisname]

IIRC we indeed have had xasers for a while, but the difference was that formerly they were soft xrays, while these are hard (ie, shorter wavelength).  I think an example was the inertial-confinement fusion reactors where they fired beams of xrays at a pellet of deuterium to trigger fusion -- need to double check that though to be sure.

inb4 jokes about hard things