Attosecond-pump attosecond-probe x-ray spectroscopy of liquid water. (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38359104/)

These scientists wanted to see how electrons move in water really quickly. They used special x-ray pulses to study this. They found out that the way the electrons in water react happens very fast, even faster than a femtosecond! This means that the movement of hydrogen atoms in water doesn't affect how the electrons move, and they also found out that a certain split in the x-ray spectrum is because of how the electrons move, not because of how the water is structured.

Li S., Lu L., Bhattacharyya S., Pearce C., Li K., Nienhuis ET., Doumy G., Schaller RD., Moeller S., Lin MF., Dakovski G., Hoffman DJ., Garratt D., Larsen KA., Koralek JD., Hampton CY., Cesar D., Duris J., Zhang Z., Sudar N., Cryan JP., Marinelli A., Li X., Inhester L., Santra R., Young L. Attosecond-pump attosecond-probe x-ray spectroscopy of liquid water. Science. 2024 Mar 8;383(6687):1118-1122. doi: 10.1126/science.adn6059. Epub 2024 Feb 15.