Christopher Parzyck had done everything right. Parzyck, a postdoctoral researcher, had brought his nickelate samples—a newly discovered family of superconductors—to a synchrotron beamline for X-ray scattering experiments. He was measuring his samples, which he'd synthesized with a new method, in the hope of detecting the suspected presence of "charge ordering"—a phenomenon in which electrons self-organize into periodic patterns. The phenomenon has been linked to high-temperature superconductivity.