Scientists from the UK’s Nottingham University and the University of Ulm in Germany captured the first-ever footage of atoms bonding and breaking using transmission electron microscopy (TEM). The process of atoms forming bonds is necessary to every existing thing in the universe. It occurs at such a little scale that the technology to capture it did not exist before this. The video exhibits two rhenium atoms between 0.1 and 0.3 nanometres in diameter, forming and breaking chemical bonds, inside a carbon nanotube. With this study, scientists expect to witness the formation of bonds and behavior of atoms in various settings to better understand atomic mechanisms.