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Scientists must often have a hard time explaining deep scientific concepts to the general public without resorting to a lot of wild gesticulating and exasperated sighs. We know we’d get around five minutes into a college physics lecture before giving up and drawing cat doodles in our notebooks for the remaining hour of class.

It’s no wonder, then, that Japan’s RIKEN national comprehensive research institution resorted to making this totally awesome anime to enthrall and amaze our stupid civilian minds with flashing lights and hot robot girls, so we’d sit still long enough for the institute to introduce its new and totally sci-fi sounding SPring-8 Angstrom Compact Free Electron Laser (SACLA).

Yes, that is the name of something that exists in our actual world, not Star Wars fan fiction or the Matrix.

Explaining what it is and does, on the other hand, requires mighty brainy feats that we simply cannot muster, so,we’ll just quote RIKEN’s homepage:

“SACLA is the most compact X-ray Free Electron Laser (XFEL) facility in the world, and is also now the only XFEL operating below 1 Å wavelength.”

Sounds great, right?

The super-stylish, retro-inspired anime doesn’t really explain much about the SACLA itself, but here’s hoping the anime – which is just a mock theme song for now – will inspire more people to go into science and research fields. You know, like how CSI inspired everyone to want to become forensic investigators until CSI: Suburban Wyoming or whatever sort of broke the spell.

Source: SACLA, YouTube
[ Read in Japanese ]