"Everything around us can be studied with X-ray lasers," said Yuri V. Shvyd'ko, a scientist at Argonne National Laboratory. "The only way we can see to build the next generation of X-ray lasers is by using diamond crystals."

Scientists use X-ray lasers for many experiments in many disciplines, including biology, physics and chemistry. Most lasers work by bouncing a wavelength of light back and forth between two mirrors. A mirror made of diamond would reflect all X-rays. The only snag is that it would require a flawless diamond.

The diamond the Argonne scientists used wasn't completely flawless, but it was close enough.

"This is a huge milestone in this type of laser research," said Stephen Durbin, a scientist at Purdue University who wrote an accompanying article in Nature Physics about the diamond mirror. "This is a situation where people are extremely anxious to do a long list of very important experiments," said Durbin.

The potential range of these experiments is enormous - X-rays lasers could take pictures of much smaller things like proteins, drugs or other molecules.