Variations of this approach could allow us to use lasers and X-rays to understand how bonds change in chemical reactions while they are actually happening.

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In other words, it's the perfect experiment. I mean, you blow something up and then catch every particle and explain where everything went. It sounds like an impossible thing!

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They wanted to fire one X-ray photon at a hydrogen molecule, knock both electrons back, and the two nuclei would explode apart. Then, they wanted to catch all four particles and figure out the orientation of the molecule in space: how far apart were the nuclei, where did the electrons go for that orientation and what were their distances.

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