“With 27,000 X-ray laser flashes per second and a luminance a billion times higher than that of the best conventional X-ray sources, XFEL will open up entirely new research opportunities and help transcend the current boundaries of scientific research,” the XFEL team said in a press release. “It will enable international scientists to decipher the molecular composition of viruses and cells, take three-dimensional images of the nanoworld, film chemical reactions and study processes occurring deep inside planets. new medication and new materials.”

A project between 11 European countries, developing the XFEL facility has cost €1.22 billion (US$1.45 billion), the bulk of which (58 percent) was funded by Germany, followed by Russia (27 percent). The assignment of the so-called beamtime, of generally one or two weeks per group and experiment, is awarded according to the scientific excellence of the submitted proposals.</p><p>Together with Minister Johanna Wanka, Hamburg’s First Mayor Olaf Scholz, and Schleswig Holstein’s Minister of Education, Science and Cultural Affairs Karin Prien, European XFEL Managing Director Robert Feidenhans’l greeted the first external researchers of the new international research facility on stage.
The European X-ray free-electron laser is inaugurated in Hamburg, Germany.