Scientists were in for a surprise when they tested the world's most powerful X-ray laser on a single molecule, and created a 'mini black hole.'

The intense laser destroyed the molecule from the inside out, leaving a void, similar to a black hole in space.

Researchers hope that this unexpected insight could advance the imaging of whole viruses and bacteria, which could help scientists to develop medicines.

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Scientists were in for a surprise when they tested the world's most powerful X-ray laser on a single molecule, and created a 'molecular black hole' (artist's impression)

CREATING THE MOLECULAR BLACK HOLE Researchers used mirrors to focus the X-ray beam into a spot 100 nanometres in diameter – this is a thousand times smaller than the width of a human hair. They looked at three types of samples – individual xenon atoms, which have 54 electrons each, and two types of molecules that each contain a single iodine atom, which has 53 electonrs. Based on previous studies, the researchers expected electrons from the outer parts of the atom to drop into spaces in the inside of the atom. And while this did happen, the process didn't stop there. The iodine atom also sucked in electrons from neighbouring carbon and hydrogen atoms, losing a total of 54 electrons. This level of damage and disruption is not only higher than expected, but also significantly different in nature. Advertisement

The 'molecular black hole' was created by researchers from Kansas State University, who were testing the X-ray laser on a small molecule.

The 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 spiralling disk of matter.

And within 30 femtoseconds – millionths of a billionth of a second – the molecule lost more than 50 electrons, causing it to blow up.

At the moment, the laser, called the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS), is used to image individual biological objects, including viruses and bacteria.

The researchers hope that the molecular black hole findings will help them better plan experiments using this laser.

Daniel Rolles, who worked on the study, said: 'For any type of experiment you do that focuses intense X-rays on a sample, you want to understand how it reacts to the X-rays.

'This paper shows that we can understand and model the radiation damage in small molecules, so now we can predict what damage we will get in other systems.'

The LCLS delivers X-rays with the highest possible energies, and records data from samples before the laser pulse destroys them.

Sebasien Boutet, co-author of the study, said: 'They are about a hundred times more intense than what you would get if you focused all the sunlight that hits the Earth's surface onto a thumbnail.'

In this study, the researchers used mirrors to focus the X-ray beam into a spot 100 nanometres in diameter – this is a thousand times smaller than the width of a human hair.

The LCLS delivers x-rays with the highest possible energies, and records data from samples before the laser pulse destroys them

They looked at three types of samples – individual xenon atoms, which have 54 electrons each, and two types of molecules that each contain a single iodine atom, which has 53 electonrs.

Based on previous studies, the researchers expected electrons from the outer parts of the atom to drop into spaces in the inside of the atom.

And while this did happen, the process didn't stop there.

The 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 spiralling disk of matter (artist's impression)

SUPERMASSIVE BLACK HOLES Supermassive black holes are incredibly dense areas in the centre of galaxies with masses that can be billions of times that of the sun. They act as intense sources of gravity which hoover up dust and gas around them. Their intense gravitational pull is thought to be what the stars within galaxies orbit around. How they are formed is still poorly understood. Astronomers believe they may form when a large cloud of gas up to 100,000 times bigger than the sun, collapses into a black hole. Many of these black hole seeds then merge to form much larger supermassive black holes. Alternatively, a supermassive black hole seed could come from a giant star, about 100 times the sun's mass, that ultimately forms into a black hole after it runs out of fuel and collapses. Advertisement

The iodine atom also sucked in electrons from neighbouring carbon and hydrogen atoms, losing a total of 54 electrons.

This level of damage and disruption is not only higher than expected, but also significantly different in nature.

Artem Rudenko, co-author of the study, said: 'We think the effect was even more important in the larger molecule than in the smaller one, but we don't know how to quantify it yet.

'We estimate that more than 60 electrons were kicked out, but we don't actually know where it stopped because we could not detect all the fragments that flew off as the molecule fell apart to see how many electrons were missing.

'This is one of the open questions we need to study.'

The researchers now hope to study more complex systems using the laser.

Mike Dunne, director of the LCLS, said: 'This has important benefits for scientists wishing to achieve the highest-resolution images of biological molecules to inform the development of better pharmaceuticals, for example.'