To get the first direct images of how fast dislocations can travel, researchers used an intense laser beam to drive shock waves through diamond crystals. Then they used an X-ray laser beam to make a series of X-ray images of the dislocations forming and spreading on a timescale of billionths of a second. The images, similar to medical X-rays that reveal the inside of the body, were recorded on a detector. Credit: K. Katagiri/Stanford University