First-ever high-res photos of chemical bonds breaking

About this groundbreaking photo from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and UC Berkeley:

"Almost as clearly as a textbook diagram, this image made by a noncontact atomic force microscope reveals the positions of individual atoms and bonds, in a molecule having 26 carbon atoms and 14 hydrogen atoms structured as three connected benzene rings."

"Nobody has ever taken direct, single-bond-resolved images of individual molecules, right before and immediately after a complex organic reaction," said Felix Fischer of the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

(via physorg, James McInerney)