'Extremely Brilliant Source' X-Rays Set To Revolutionize Science (gizmodo.com) 77
Rose Pastore reporting via Gizmodo: A new way of producing powerful X-ray beams -- the brightest on Earth -- is now making it possible to create 3D images of matter at astounding resolutions. This "Extremely Brilliant Source" officially opened last month at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility in France, and scientists are already using it to study the coronavirus behind covid-19. These X-ray beams will image the interiors of fossils, brains, batteries, and countless other interesting items down to the atomic scale, revealing unprecedented information and supercharging scientific research.
A typical medical X-ray, like you would get for a broken bone, can show doctors details about your particular fracture and the tissue around it. X-rays penetrate the body and are absorbed at different rates by different tissue; once they've passed through you, they hit a detector, creating the familiar black-and-white X-ray image. The Extremely Brilliant Source produces X-rays 10 trillion times more powerful than those used in hospitals. With such a beam, scientists could create a 3D image of your broken bone so detailed that they could see the individual atoms in the blood cells surrounding your fracture. Of course, you wouldn't want to be hit with this particular beam -- the dose of radiation would be fatal.
The possibilities that the Extremely Brilliant Source opens up feel endless. One area that particularly excites Francesco Sette, director general of the ESRF, is research into the structure and functioning of brains, which could eventually enable brain-like electronics. "It would be a major revolution, not only for neuroscience, but also for all those applications that are coming up to use possibly the human brain architecture for a new generation of devices," he said.
A typical medical X-ray, like you would get for a broken bone, can show doctors details about your particular fracture and the tissue around it. X-rays penetrate the body and are absorbed at different rates by different tissue; once they've passed through you, they hit a detector, creating the familiar black-and-white X-ray image. The Extremely Brilliant Source produces X-rays 10 trillion times more powerful than those used in hospitals. With such a beam, scientists could create a 3D image of your broken bone so detailed that they could see the individual atoms in the blood cells surrounding your fracture. Of course, you wouldn't want to be hit with this particular beam -- the dose of radiation would be fatal.
The possibilities that the Extremely Brilliant Source opens up feel endless. One area that particularly excites Francesco Sette, director general of the ESRF, is research into the structure and functioning of brains, which could eventually enable brain-like electronics. "It would be a major revolution, not only for neuroscience, but also for all those applications that are coming up to use possibly the human brain architecture for a new generation of devices," he said.
Obligatory (Score:1)
WTF Slashdot Editors ? (Score:5, Interesting)
Lol.
I shared this story on Slashdot 1 month ago when the installation was opening, and when the information was not everywhere in mainstream media.
It was tagged as SPAM, and declined. The fact it was not a repost from Gizmodo...
Slashdot is that now: the place where you can get information 1 month late.
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Now? It's always been that way :-)
The incorrect spam flagging thing is an issue, try using the feedback link at the bottom of the page. They are trying to fix it.
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Lol.
I shared this story on Slashdot 1 month ago when the installation was opening, and when the information was not everywhere in mainstream media.
It was tagged as SPAM, and declined. The fact it was not a repost from Gizmodo...
Slashdot is that now: the place where you can get information 1 month late.
You realise Slashdot editors are different people right and without clear standards on to post and what not. Simply sharing a story is not as relevant as it being shared in an interesting way and being seen by an editor that actually takes an interest in it.
Many people also said Bohemian Rhapsody would never be a hit, much less get played on the radio as a single. If Slashdot had only one editor on staff you may have a point about your Gizmodo conspiracy, but the reality is more likely, one of the editors w
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Why not improve the Firehose system, better UX, meta-moderation, etc?
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I too have had this happen.
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tagged as spam
This is the correct solution to people who want you to look at anything gizmodo&c, someone just got the flowchart backwards.
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In any case, it might have only been extremely bright, and not brilliant at all.
I mean, did they even look at it?
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Slashdot has always been at least 2 days behind in news.
Articles here are usually from already published articles that others have read and brought notice here.
Not only that... (Score:3)
The Extremely Brilliant Source produces X-rays 10 trillion times more powerful than those used in hospitals. With such a beam, scientists could create a 3D image of your broken bone so detailed that they could see the individual atoms in the blood cells surrounding your fracture.
If you're lucky, "wow, that's amazing!" would be your final words before you died from the radiation.
Re:Not only that... (Score:4, Insightful)
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It's Australian too. My friend managed the synchrotron there for many years until he passed away a couple yars ago. Synchrotrons never really got the glamour and fame that supercolliders got, but they're generally booked full time with experiments. If you don't want to smash 'em to bits then dazzle 'em instead with your brilliance.
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Uploading Brain to the cloud.... (Score:3)
So could this be used to do a complete scan of someones brain at the time of death, then later when computer technology advances enough virtually recreate that consciousness in a virtual world?
Re:Uploading Brain to the cloud.... (Score:5, Insightful)
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And right now, we don't even understand unconsciousness!
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If it's the only way to preserve a brain's structure for the time being, that question may have to wait. Collect data now, figure it out later. (Cryogenics is another possible way.)
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Wouldn't it just destroy sensitive tissue (or I guess anything of biological origin) before it could image it?
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It would be a destructive scan.
BS (Score:3)
The mind is the electrical and chemical state of the brain at any given time - the software if you will - its more than just the hardware which is all you can image with an x-ray. In theory you could reproduce a brains hard/wetware exactly already given enough time and manpower just using current systems.
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The mind is the electrical and chemical state of the brain at any given time - the software if you will - its more than just the hardware which is all you can image with an x-ray. In theory you could reproduce a brains hard/wetware exactly already given enough time and manpower just using current systems.
Assuming that state isn't constantly changing...
Or even just decaying after say death.
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Well it probably is constantly changing , but the hardware isn't, at least not on a daily basis. If the hardware was all there was to it there'd be no such thing as sleep or unconciousness where the hardware hasn't changed but the mind essentially isn't "running" even though the brain is stlll working. I suppose to use another computer analogy the concious mind has been swapped out for another process :)
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There is also growing indication, that the human brain is actually just part of things. Nobody knows what the rest is, but Neurosciences finds that it gets more mysterious how things work the closer they look. Another is the constant failure of "AI" to produce even a dim glimmer of real general intelligence. There are more.
Just remember that the idea that the brain produces consciousness and intelligence is pure conjecture. Stating it as a fact is unscientific and in fact on the same level as religion (phys
Re: BS (Score:2)
"Just remember that the idea that the brain produces consciousness and intelligence is pure conjecture"
So people turn to religion, and all of the hate, war, and oppression that comes with it.
How come people can't deal with the unexplained without creating a death cult?
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I'm not even going to consider anything 'mystical' about the human brain, or even considering such a thing as a 'soul'. I'm past all that, long ago.
The human brain is an incredibly dense, incredibly complex system, and it's had aeons to evolve into what it is today. Thinking that we can unravel all of that in a few decades is not reasonable.
We don't even have the technology to properly observe a living human brains' functioning, not at
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You pretty much fall for a different from of Mysticism here: One that ascribes powers to complexity it does not have. In Physics, the whole is never more than the sum of its parts.
The simple fact of the matter is that the current physical standard model does not allow consciousness. Physicists do not see that as a problem, they know it is wrong (no quantum-gravity, i.e. one part of the theory strongly needs something the other part says does not exist...). Whether we will get a extension to the standard mod
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I think, therefore I am, regardless of knowing how that even works. You don't need a Masters in Electrical Engineering to turn on a lightswitch, and I don't need a down-to-the-cellular-level understanding of my own meat brain to wake up in the morning, l
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Eventually we'll understand how our own brains actually work, even if it takes another hundred years or three.
Well, physical brain, possibly. Whether that includes consciousness and intelligence remains to be seen. We still have no conclusive evidence that intelligence is even possible with the Physics we know. We do know some limited forms are possible with the Mathematics we know, but these parts only have implementations that are far less powerful than smart human beings because they all scale exceptionally badly and only work for tiny problems. And they are not general intelligence either.
In the meantime I really wish all these marketing departments would stop trying to shove this half-assed excuse for 'AI' down everyones' throats. It's annoying and it might become dangerous.
I completely agree on
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And I will say it again as well: We cannot rule out anything mystic either, no matter how much that may make you uncomfortable. Science requires positive proof. The question is open. And no, that is not me trying to prepare a second step and argue for that mysticism. There is no proof for it either. At the point "the question is open", my argumentation chain is complete. I am well aware that many religious nuts use that two-step process: 1. create a void 2. fill it with their crap.
As to your (C)PRNG, mathem
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I don't see a point in even discussing this further.
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There is absolutely no scientific principle that says will will find out everything eventually. I suggest you learn to live with that. I also suggest a little more mental flexibility, as that may allow you to see past your current quasi-religious delusion. Physicalism is just a bizarre form of mysticism. It is a belief. It is not like atheism, which is most decidedly not a religion.
I call bullshit on all that. 'Mental flexibility' is not how I'd describe saying "It's magic!" or "It's God's will!". That's a cop-out. That's on the same level as saying "God will protect us from the pandemic because we are Righteous", and believing 'religion' and 'faith' overrule 'science' and 'actual truth'. There's already too much idiocy perpetrated by my fellow humans as-is without this apparent trend towards rejecting a thousand years' worth of intellectual progres
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And you continue to not even really read what I wrote. There is nothing, absolutely nothing in Science that rules out "magic". The scientific state-of-the-art is that so far we have not found magic in any reliably provable form. That is not ruling it out. That is not expecting it to exits either. The question is completely open. Somehow that idea does not seem to be compatible with your thought processes. Because you seem to be incapable of even understanding it. Science requires things to provably exist to
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The mind is the electrical and chemical state of the brain at any given time
Nope. That is physicalist drivel (i.e. quasi-religion). The actual scientific state-of-the-art is that nobody knows. In particular, there is no known mechanism for "consciousness" in Physics, i.e. it does not exist in the current standard model. It does not get much more "unknown at this time" than that.
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Claiming that the mind is anything other than "the electrical and chemical state of the brain" is rejecting the best conclusion that can be reached by available evidence. The only reasonable objection that can be raised is that other parts of the nervous system might also be considered part of the mind.
Demanding that physics provide a total solution for consciousness now is just silly. We have a fair idea of what's going on in many aspects of consciousness. Progress is achieved by getting more data to fill
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Your stance is religious, not scientific. At this time, there is no scientifically valid basis for any claim as to what consciousness is or is not.
Not surprising, you use the same manipulation techniques and lies that are sued by religious people. Nor example, I never required a "total solution for consciousness" from Physics. The actual reality is that it has absolutely _nothing_ regarding consciousness. In the current physical standard model, consciousness does not exist. Then you lie some more about what
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Demanding that physics explain consciousness is like demanding that mathematics explain fish. It's completely wrongheaded. You seem to be demanding that "the current standard model" has to have a particle called "consciousness", which is just silly.
Consciousness requires something to be conscious of, and some mechanism to respond (internally or externally) to the that something. Touch a baseball and the body's sensory system reacts and sends signals to the brain, which processes those signals in many ways i
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Ah, I see. You do not understand Physics! That explains a lot. For your information: Physics requires some elementary base mechanism for everything that is observable. In Physics, the whole can never be more than the sum of its parts. There is no such base mechanism for consciousness, hence consciousness is outside of the current physical standard model.
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"That is physicalist drivel (i.e. quasi-religion)."
Wtf are you talking about? I suggest you close your arse before any more rubbish dribbles out of it.
If the mind was simply down to the hardware of the brain and nothing more then explain where our concious mind goes when were asleep because the hardware hasn't changed has it!
" In particular, there is no known mechanism for "consciousness" in Physics, i.e. it does not exist in the current standard mode"
Sounds like you're the religious one now. Are you going
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Well, the asshole here is definitely you. For example, the standard model completely explains a web-browser in all its behaviors and parts, including ones under hardware errors. Yet there is absolutely nothing in that standard model that could serve as a basis for consciousness.
And why do you asshole assume I am going for a "god in anything" explanation? That is just your stupidity at work. I am very explicitly going for "the question is open" and "current physics does not explain it" and "we have no clue".
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It's an interesting idea...but my guess is not. Having the entire brain in focus probably isn't possible. But it might be in interesting form of suicide. If I guess correctly 5 seconds after they take the picture your entire brain will be a charred cinder...or at least hotter than boiling lead.
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At the stated intensity, it will just fry the brain...
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So could this be used to do a complete scan of someones brain at the time of death, then later when computer technology advances enough virtually recreate that consciousness in a virtual world?
We barely have ability to simulate a protein folding. We are no where near simulating a single subcellular structure. What makes you think we can simulate an entire brain?
"Of course, you wouldn't want to be hit" (Score:3)
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Will probably be militarised at some point (Score:2)
With a powerful enough xray you could take out troops and shielded electronics at the same time and if it can be done it will be done at some poinyt by some unscrupulous dictatorship.
Re:Will probably be militarised at some point (Score:5, Informative)
Not something that you could take into battle at this time. Other high-energy particle weapons exist, but nothing with this much energy (6 GeV).
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The orbital platform makes more sense, but that platform had better have MASSIVE heat exchangers, or this will be a one shot weapon.
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To a degree, but every Fuckton Of Energy Dumper built tends to require energy sources, and it's hard to get near those orders of magnitude without things that are large, volatile, or both. Dense energy vs "rapid release" is an ongoing problem.
Like large weight/bearing goals, you can't escape large dimensions very far without entirely new materials/chemistry.
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I mean, you're right, it's just that the very, very large and quite volatile power source is kept at a safe distance of 1 AU.
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Needs a scary name to emphasize how dangerous it could be. Maybe Death something.
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May also work as an orbital platform.
Exactly, the extreme size won't be an obstacle once it's in space, and there will be no jetskis to disrupt it. This will eventually allow us to read the enemy's thoughts by imaging his brain at an atomic level from space (unless he's wearing a protective hat).
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I'm sure someone also pointed out the absurdity of pocket computers back in the 50s as they stood in a warehouse sized room with a mainframe in it.
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Killer death ray! (Score:3)
Missing information (Score:4, Interesting)
how the fuck does it work? Cool, it's new and better.
We're nerds. How does it work?
old story (Score:2)
Observer affecting the observed (Score:1)
If the radiation is strong enough to kill, it is also strong enough to have unwelcome effects on the nature morte.
I imagine (yes, pun intended again), this would limit the applications further. The Wuhan-virus mentioned in the write-up, for example — because we don't have COVID-19 mentioned enough these days — will, probably, be subtly damaged within microseconds of the observation. Will such observatio
Re: Observer affecting the observed (Score:2)
"such an inspection might leave the inspected parts radiating at dangerous levels."
I would also be concerned about the possible physical damage this could cause, especially to welds.
Not for me, thanks (Score:2)
Of course, you wouldn't want to be hit with this particular beam -- the dose of radiation would be fatal.
...
One area that particularly excites Francesco Sette, director general of the ESRF, is research into the structure and functioning of brains ...
Am I the only one who sees a problem here?
Oooh a cancer machine! (Score:2)
" The Extremely Brilliant Source produces X-rays 10 trillion times more powerful than those used in hospitals"
(talks about imaging brains)
No thanks. I hope they are talking about cadaver brains
Rats! (Score:2)
Researcher 1: "Wow, we just watched the precise thought patterns of a mouse!"
Researcher 2: "Interesting, what were its thoughts?"
Researcher 1: "The translation is as follows: 'Ooow! It's hot! my head is frying!, I'm...' It ends there."