Kim Nygård

Felt looks like a tangled ball of wool, but under X-rays you can see hidden trails inside. When a water drop lands on such material, it doesn't just spread across the surface — some of the liquid dives deep, like water into blotting paper. Scientists captured this process for the first time with an X-ray camera snapping hundreds of frames per second. The secret lies in the needles.

A laser melts metal powder layer by layer, and inside the boiling pool, vapor bubbles appear and collapse within milliseconds. Seeing this kitchen in action was previously impossible: the X-ray tomograph that takes 3D images is too slow. The sample has to rotate, and by the time it does, the melt has already changed a hundred times.