The human eye is limited in its vision. We cannot see objects much thinner than a human hair (a fraction of a millimeter) or resolve motions quicker than a blink (a tenth of a second). Advances in optics and microscopy over the past millennium have, of course, let us peer far beyond the limits of the naked eye, to view exquisite images such as a micrograph of a virus or a stroboscopic photograph of a bullet at the millisecond it punched through a lightbulb. But if we were shown a movie depicting atoms jiggling around, until recently we could be reasonably sure we were looking at a cartoon, an artist’s impression or a simulation of some sort.

In the past 10 years my research group at the California Institute of Technology has developed a new form of imaging, unveiling motions that occur at the size scale of atoms and over time intervals as short as a femtosecond (a million billionth of a second). Because the technique enables imaging in both space and time and is based on the venerable electron microscope, I dubbed it four-dimensional (4-D) electron microscopy. We have used it to visualize phenomena such as the vibration of cantilevers a few billionths of a meter wide, the motion of sheets of carbon atoms in graphite vibrating like a drum after being “struck” by a laser pulse, and the transformation of matter from one state to another. We have also imaged individual proteins and cells.

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Electron microscope - Microscope - California Institute of Technology - Methods and Techniques - Microscopy