Visualising chemical reactions by X-ray methods is a tantalising prospect. New light sources provide the prospect for studying atomic, electronic and energy transfers accompanying chemical change by X-ray spectroscopy and inelastic scattering. Here we assess how this adventure can illuminate inorganic and catalytic chemistry. In particular X-ray inelastic scattering provides a means of exploiti...

Bragg X-ray scattering intensities are defined as scattering by the thermodynamic average electroncharge density. Purely elastic, kinematic X-ray scattering by a target in thermal equilibrium is always larger than Bragg scattering. At low temperatures, the elastic scattering becomes Bragg scattering. For large molecules, such as a crystal, at ordinary temperatures the elastic and Bragg scatteri...

We use published ROSAT observations of the X-ray Nova V1974 Cygni 1992 to test a model for interstellar dust grains consisting of a mixture of carbonaceous grains and silicate grains. The time-dependent X-ray emission from the nova is modelled as the sum of emission from a ONe white dwarf plus a thermal plasma, and X-ray scattering is calculated for a dust mixture with a realistic size distribu...

X-ray free-electron lasers (FELs) are promising tools for structural determination of macromolecules via coherent x-ray scattering. During ultrashort and ultraintense x-ray pulses with an atomic-scale wavelength, samples are subject to radiation damage and possibly become highly ionized, which may influence the quality of x-ray scattering patterns. We develop a toolkit to treat detailed ionizat...