Fig. 1: The animaton shows the reaction of a phospholipid membrane in the lamellar liquid crystalline phase to a T-jump: Directly after the laser flash the diffraction peak shifts to higher angles, demonstrating the existence of a thin liquid crystalline intermediate (Lalpha*). Under near equilibrium conditions such a thin repeat distance has not been found in the same temperature region. In the further time course of the experiment the intermediate phase relaxes back into the equilibrium structure Lalpha. The time resolution of the experiment was set to 5 ms.