X-Ray Laser Reveals Ultra-Fast Molecular Changes

Imagine your video camera shooting at a frame-rate in the quadrillionths of a second. The Linac Coherent Light Source, an X-ray free-electron laser at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, has measured how a ring-shaped gas molecule unravels in the millionths of a billionth of a second after it is split open by light. Stacking the measurement data in sequence drove this computer animation of molecular motion.

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