Posted on 03/17/2013 2:58:54 PM PDT by neverdem
This sounds exciting and I’m happy but I didn’t understand a word of it.
Basically, they can detect that you farted without you knowing you have farted.
MASINT is ages old.
Wow, I can see all kinds of uses for that information.
18 megadaltons is a lot of Daltons.
Heap big molecule.
Theoretically one could study a nano-analog of the entire universe using mass spectrometry.
It can tell you which elements a material is made of.
Carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, etc. Each element has a “spectrum.”
Same idea when they look at stars and planets.
Apparently, they had troubles decoding more complicated molecules.
bookmark.
I see. Thank you.
Not exactly. To "decode" a molecule (or other entity), you want the item to remain intact to the maximum extent possible (to get it's "parent mass"). The larger the molecules get, the more places they have available to break apart. If there is too much fragmentation, you lose the ability to extract the structural info.
Yet to get the molecule to work at all, you have to get it into the gas phase, remove at least one electron (to get it charged so the electric and magnetic fields can "steer" it, or accelerate it so that different mass fragments can be detected).
Past methods of ionization involved hitting the vaporizing molecules with a beam of electrons, or charged particles, which can be TOO energetic for the less stable giant molecules. So you need a kinder/gentler ionization means. This is one approach of several.
And the above is a VERY simplistic picture.
The viral particles can be carried unharmed into the gas phase? Thank goodness. We can send the SWAT team home.
...an 18 megadalton viral assembly is perhaps the biggest thing in the mass spectrometer (MS). Dutch and US researchers have used quadrupole time-of-flight (QToF) native MS to investigate intact capsids from a bacteriophage -- a virus that infects bacteria.
If that doesn’t win you the post of the week award then I say the voting is rigged.
identifying viral structures more readily may mean that they will find a way to kill the little buggers more easily like you know that viruses put up a protein shield to make them selves invisible to immune systems but i also read somewhere that there is work to make that shield visible to immune systems anyways the more they know about viruses the well and good we will all be in the longer run
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