An international team of experimentalists and theorists working at CERN’s nuclear-physics facility ISOLDE have succeeded in performing the first ever laser-spectroscopy measurements of a short-lived radioactive molecule, radium monofluoride. For physicists studying molecules, laser spectroscopy, in which laser light is shone on molecules to reveal their energy structure, is a staple tool in the toolbox. Until now, however, researchers hadn’t been able to use the technique to study short-lived ra