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Researchers in Palo Alto in the US state of California have developed the most powerful X-ray laser in the world, the BBC reports.

The Linac Coherent Light Source is being used to see how atoms and molecules move in living systems.

The machine is a billion times more intense than the previous generation of lasers.

Each X-ray pulse has as much power as the national grid of a large country, and a hundred are produced every second.

Prof Mike Dunne, who runs the Palo Alto facility, said the LCLS fired extremely fast bursts of X-rays.

"Think about a person running the hundred metres," he told the BBC’s correspondent. "The difference between first place and second place is sometimes 1/100th of a second.

“Take that 1/100th of a second and divide it a million times. Then take one of those divisions and divide it another million times. And that's how fast this burst of X-rays is."

The laser was developed at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. Its systems were adapted from a particle collider. But instead of smashing atoms, it enables researchers to see what is going on in living systems and to track chemical reactions as they happen.

"This genuinely is a revolution," said Prof Dunne.

"We can now see for the first time deep inside an atom on the space scale and the time scale that chemistry and biology really happens. It transforms our ability to view the real world."