MADISON, Wis. (WTAQ) - UW-Madison is getting a $4.5 million grant to study an electron gun for a huge laser machine.

The Energy Department awarded the funding for fabrication and testing of the gun. It will be used in a “free electron laser” that’s several hundred yards long, and produces laser beams of radiation with light pulses in the quadrillions of a second.

UW scientists say it will create the world’s brightest source of ultraviolet light and soft X-rays. Researchers in several fields will use it – and they’ll be able to see things as sharply as a handful of molecules.