A research team using the Cornell High Energy Synchrotron Source and the Complex Materials Consortium sector 9 beamline at the Advanced Photon Source has produced the fastest movies ever made of electron motion. Created by scattering x rays off of water, the movies show electrons sloshing in water molecules, and each frame lasts just 4 attoseconds (quintillionths of a second). The results, published in the 11 June PRL, could let researchers "watch" chemical reactions even faster than those viewable with today's "ultrafast" pulsed lasers.
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