The brightest gamma ray beam ever created, produced in research led by two Scottish universities, could open up new possibilities for cancer therapy.
The ray, more than a thousand billion times brighter than the sun, could be used in medical imaging, radiotherapy and radioisotope production.
Physicists led by Professor Dino Jaroszyski, of Strathclyde University in Glasgow, have discovered that ultra-short duration laser pulses can interact with ionised gas to give off beams that are so intense they can pass through 20cm of lead and would take 1.5m of concrete to be completely absorbed.
Strathclyde University was joined in the research by Glasgow University and Instituto Superior Tecnico in Lisbon.
Professor Jaroszynski said: "This is a great breakthrough, which could make the probing of very dense matter easier and more extensive, and so allow us to monitor nuclear fusion capsules imploding.
"It could also act as a powerful tool in medicine for cancer therapy and there is nothing else to match the duration of the gamma ray pulses, which is also why it is so bright.
"In nature, if you accelerate charged particles, such as electrons, they radiate. We trapped particles in a cavity of ions trailing an intense laser pulse and accelerated these to high energies.
"Electrons in this cavity also interact with the laser and pick up energy from it and oscillate wildly - much like a child being pushed on a swing.
"The large swinging motion and the high energy of the electrons allow a huge increase in the photon energy to produce gamma rays. This enabled the gamma ray photons to outshine any other earthbound source."
The research has been published in the journal Nature Physics.
taken from http://news.stv.tv/scotland/west-central/270791-scottish-universites-gamma-ray-could-treat-cancer/
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