Shortest flashes from ultra-hot matter

High-energy heavy ion collisions, which are studied at RHIC in Brookhaven and soon at the LHC in Geneva, can be a source of light flashes of a few yoctoseconds duration (a septillionth of a second, 10-24 s, ys) - the time that light needs to traverse an atomic nucleus. This is shown in calculations of the light emission of so-called quark-gluon plasmas, which are created in such collisions for extremely short periods of time. Under certain conditions, double flashes are created, which could be utilized in the future to visualize the dynamics of atomic nuclei. (Physical Review Letters, 07. For high-precision spectroscopy and structural studies of molecules, short light flashes with lowest possible wavelength, i.e., high photon energy, are required. Currently, x-ray flashes of some attosecond (a quintillionth of a second, 10-18 s) duration are accessible experimentally. Even shorter pulses with even higher photon energy would improve the temporal and spatial resolution, or would allow for the investigation of even smaller structures, such as for example atomic nuclei.