Stephen R. Leone

A chemical bond is like a stretched spring between atoms. When it's snapped, the molecular fragments fly apart, but they don't freeze: they keep vibrating, like a plucked string. That's exactly the vibration a team of researchers caught when they broke a methyl iodide molecule with an ultraviolet laser.

Sunlight hits a rooftop, and electrons are born in a thin film. They must reach the wires before they cool down and lose their energy. In tin sulfide, a cheap and accessible material for batteries, this sprint and cooldown has now been captured with unprecedented sharpness: frames follow every billionth of a billionth of a second.