Xu Liu

Every breath you take and every muscle twitch runs on a stream of electrons flowing through proteins inside your cells. These proteins aren't static: they constantly change shape, like a spring that compresses and releases. But until now, no one has seen exactly how these movements open or close the path for electrons.

A drop of blood is a bustling city in miniature. Thousands of different molecules scurry through it, each leaving its own trace. But peering directly into this city is hard: the streets are tangled, and there are so many inhabitants that counting them all individually is out of the question. Scientists have found a way to listen to the whole city at once, without singling out its residents.

Light in a microscope doesn't arrive as a steady stream but like buckshot from a bag: sometimes more photons, sometimes fewer. This random scatter is the shot noise. It sets a limit: faint signals from tiny objects get lost in the ripple. Scientists have found a way to calm this buckshot.