A pulse of light sets the tempo in the material. Atoms in a crystalline sheet just a few atoms thick begin to move—not ...

A newly devised nozzle fitted with a pinhole-sized capillary has allowed researchers to distribute helium atoms with X-ray-like waves on randomly shaped surfaces. The technique could power the ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Using a new ultrafast camera, researchers have recorded the first real-time image of two atoms vibrating in a molecule. Key to the experiment, which appears in this week's issue of ...

Researchers built a silver-grooved chip that channels laser energy into nanometer-spaced peaks, beating the diffraction limit and aiding light-matter studies.

One of my pet topics here on Ars is microscopy. This may be a case of objective envy, but I like to think that it is just a case of admiring work in a related field. In any case, what I often forget ...

The inside of giant planets can reach pressures more than one million times the Earth's atmosphere. As a result of that ...

In 1912, scientists invented X-ray crystallography and revealed a crystal’s atomic structure for the first time Tess Joosse Humans have marveled at crystals for millennia. Viridescent emerald, rich ...

Diffractometers have been around for a long time and are used to analyze various types of materials and provide information regarding their structure. While there are a few different types, we’re ...

A time-resolved x-ray experiment now elucidates that tiny atomic vibrations shift negative charges over a 1000 times larger distance between atoms and switch the macroscopic polarization on a time ...

The discovery of a crystal whose atoms are packed in a pattern that never repeats has won Israeli scientist Daniel Shechtman the 2011 Nobel Prize in chemistry. The structures in quasicrystals, as they ...