Scotch tape producing x-rays

Within the last month at UCLA researcher Seth Putterman and his students, Carlos Camara, Juan Escobar, and Jonathan Hird have discovered that scotch tape can produce X-rays. Similar to the visible light emitted by biting wintergreen LifeSavers in the dark, when the scotch tape is pulled in a vacuum it emits light. The reason this happens is because of triboluminesces, it is the separation of charges during the rubbing of two materials together or in this case the separation of the tape. When the charges reunite, light and X-rays can be produced, just like in a lightning strike. The X-rays created when the tape is pulled is produced in nanosecond bursts containing about 1 million X-ray photons apiece. This is equivalent of about a tenth of a milliwatt of energy. That was enough energy to produce an X-ray image in a second. Sandwhiching a finger between the vacuum containing the tape and X-ray film allows the image to be recorded.
To watch the scientists do this - http://www.nature.com/nature/videoarchive/x-rays/