Eighty researchers built an X-ray camera that fits in one lab — and it just filmed atoms mid-change

Some of the world's most powerful X-ray machines are so large they need their own national facilities. At Arizona State University, a team of about 80 scientists, engineers and biologists has built one that fits inside a university lab — and it has just passed its biggest test. The machine fires X-ray pulses lasting femtoseconds (a femtosecond is to one second what one second is to 32 million years), fast enough to film atoms as they move. Using it, the team watched a quantum material called tantalum disulfide rearrange its atoms and electrons in the instant after a laser pulse hit it — the first study of its kind ever done on a compact instrument. The facility now opens its doors as a national resource for researchers everywhere, and the team's next targets are protein crystals tied to human disease and renewable energy.

SDG 9 · Industry, innovation and infrastructure — Mechanism: tech innovation