Back where I grew up, the old men had a saying: “It’ll come in handy, even if I never use it.” Ever since I had to store my own stuff, I have come to be more and more skeptical of the value of keeping old stuff. The good people at the Stanford Linear Accelerator (SLAC) have been listening to the same old men though, and some good stuff has come of it. Back in its day, SLAC was king of the hill among particle accelerators. But, once past its prime, the question of what to do with all that expensive equipment was raised.

In a flash of inspiration, the SLAC researchers proposed turning it into a very bright X-ray laser that could be used by other researchers to study physics, chemistry, and biology questions. A shiny new acronym arose from the ashes of SLAC, as it became the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS), a type of free electron laser. Now, 18 years after it was first proposed, it has been switched on. And, much to everyone’s surprise, it actually works really well.

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Bright flashes and heaps of ashes: a new X-ray laser source