But the smallest amount to date that can be X-rayed is an attogram, or roughly 10,000 atoms. That's because the X-ray emission of a single atom is just too weak to be detected—until now.

Scientists have taken the world's first X-ray SIGNAL (or SIGNATURE) of just one atom. This groundbreaking achievement could revolutionize the way scientists detect the materials.

But no one has been able to X-ray an individual atom—until now. Physicists used X-rays to study the insides of two different single atoms, in work published in the journal Nature on Wednesday.

X-ray crystallography, like mass spectroscopy and nuclear spectroscopy, is an extremely useful material characterization technique that is unfortunately hard for amateurs to perform. The physical o… ...

Pharaoh Khufu set out to create the Great Pyramid of Giza in 2550 B.C. The pyramid was built with around 2.3 million limestone and granite blocks.

NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory spotted the X-ray emissions by chance last year while focusing on a supernova remnant, or the remains of an exploded star. Wang said it was the first time X-rays ...