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Today storage ring technology is approaching its theoretical limits and efforts are concentrated on improving insertion devices, X-ray optical elements, instrumentation and sample environment, as well as detectors. Focusing to nano-scale beam cross sections, increasing the degree of coherence and exploring ways to produce picosecond or even sub-picosecond pulses for time resolved studies attract a lot of attention. In most cases today X-rays probe matter in its equilibrium state. The logical next step is to extend the methodology to include the investigation of non-equilibrium, of new states of matter with atomic resolution in space and time. Free Electron Lasers provide the necessary very intense flashes of coherent X-rays with wavelengths down to 0.1 nm and they are expected to revolutionize condensed matter research, chemistry, materials science and structural biology. For the first time we will be able to study the structure and the dynamics of matter with atomic resolution in space and time. Referring to the first scattering experiments performed at FLASH, the VUV-FEL user facility at DESY, strategies for performing experiments at free electron X-ray lasers will be discussed.
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