A new microscope captures images at unprecendented speeds to produce footage of atoms moving around.

The latest movies from Los Angeles are silent, and filmed in grainy black and white - but they are receiving rave reviews from around the world. No, these films aren't recently rediscovered archives of the antics of Harold Lloyd - they are the clearest ever footage of atoms in motion.

For years, transmission electron microscopes (TEMs) have been able to resolve individual atoms, and even objects just a fraction of a nanometre across.

This is achieved by shooting a finely focused beam of electrons through a specimen, and seeing how it is altered by the object.

But although TEMs can provide an exquisitely detailed 3D picture of a specimen, the resolution in the fourth dimension – time – is less impressive.

The devices are limited by having an electron beam produced by heating a positive electrode – a method that unleashes a large burst of electrons emitted over several milliseconds, resulting in blurred movement.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16100-electron-strobe-turns-atoms-into-movie-stars.html

Scientists discover the chance meeting 1.9bn years ago that led to the eruption of life on Earth

A chance encounter about 1.9 billion years ago, led to life on Earth, say scientists.
New research finds that an amoeba-like organism engulfed a bacterium that had developed the power to use sunlight to break down water to make oxygen.
The bacterium could have been intended as prey, but instead became incorporated into its attacker's body, transforming it into the ancestor of every tree, flowering plant and seaweed on Earth today.

Life erupts: A brief encounter changed the world forever
Paul Falkowski, professor of biochemistry and biophysics at Rutgers University in New Jersey  says that this single event transformed evolution of life on Earth.
"The descendants of that tiny organism transformed our atmosphere, filling it with the oxygen needed for animals and, eventually humans to evolve."
 Amoeba-like organism: Preyed on the bacteria that would become the ancestor of every tree on Earth
It was previously believed that such organisms existed on Earth, but the nature of the event has only become clear now, from studies of chloroplasts - which absorb sunlight and use its energy to generate nutrients and oxygen.
 
"It is an astonishing thought that a single random encounter between two tiny cells so long ago could have had such a huge consequence," said Falkowski.
Nick Lane, a researcher at University College London and author of Oxygen: The Molecule that Made the World, said this information had been emerging. He said, "Oxygen energises all life, and makes it big."
"Nothing else can provide the energy needed to fuel the demands of multicellular organism. True photosynthesis evolved only once, and the chance encounter that gave rise to plants also happened just once. These were two freak accidents in the 3.5 billion-year history of life on Earth."

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1084251/Scientists-discover-chance-meeting-1-9bn-years-ago-led-life-Earth.html