How scientists' ability to adapt led to new insights into magnetism

With time scheduled to use a certain beamline at the National Synchrotron Light Source-II (NSLS-II), scientists from NSLS-II and their partner institutions faced a challenge. They planned on researching a special type of region in magnetic materials that could be useful for next-generation computers. Regions in magnetic materials—called magnetic domains—determine a material's magnetic properties. The scientists wanted to study how these magnetic domains changed over time under the influence of an outside magnetic field.