Photos: Stanford's X-ray vision

The Stanford Linear Accelerator ends here, but it is being extended beyond the tunnel inside the hill to create the world's first X-ray laser machine to make molecular "movies." The current accelerator will inject electrons into devices that produce X-rays millions of times brighter than those used in medicine.

This will snap freeze-frame pictures at a quadrillionth of a second, illuminating biological and chemical reactions never seen before. Such freeze-frame animation has the potential to transform the way energy, electronics, nanotechnology, medicine and physics are understood and applied.

The San Andreas Fault sits about a mile to the right.