Question: What are intense beams and what do you use them for?

Susana Teixeira answered on 20 Jun 2013:

Intense beams have more photons. Why do we want that?

When we put a crystal in front of the beam, the crystal diffracts the beam in a characteristic way that we can record and trace that to the structure, which is what we want to know.
When the crystals are made of biological molecules, very often the images are not very clear because the crystals are small, or they get destroyed by X-rays before we could get enough images/data. So what can we do? We can use larger crystals, but that is often not possible, or we can use beams with more photons so we can get better images, faster. Like in a synchrotron.

It’s as if you were trying to draw someone’s face, but they are in a poorly lit room so you cannot see them well. Your drawing will probably look more like a caricature. What do you do? You use a more intense beam of light: put a light bulb on with a few more Watts. Now you can see more details of the face and your drawing is more accurate. Same principle!