Photos: Stanford's X-ray vision

On this track, electrons spinning at nearly the speed of light release energy in the form of X-rays as they turn a corner.

Researchers have focused X-rays to 50 microns to read text hidden by gold leaf in Archimedes' Palimpsest more than 2,200 years ago. A human hair is about 100 microns thick. Rays were focused to 2 microns to examine cometary material from the NASA Stardust satellite.

Briefly in the 1980s, researchers brought coronary bypass patients here to perform angiographies, lessening the use of iodine. However, doctors preferred in-house testing. The facility is the size of a football field, but advances in the coming decades could shrink the equipment down to the size of a tennis court, making it compact enough to fit inside a hospital.