Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: Flipside on August 28, 2009, 11:35:48 am
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A team at IBM have managed to get an exceptionally good image of a single molecule using a new imaging technique:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8225491.stm
That's pretty impressive.
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Looking kind of blurry there.
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Yeeesh...
Sometimes I could weep...
Edit : Though I suppose it is a good example of how nonchalant society has become to scientific advancement.
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SHOPPED! :P
Just kidding. That's actually pretty cool.
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Yeeesh...
Sometimes I could weep...
Edit : Though I suppose it is a good example of how nonchalant society has become to scientific advancement.
Arrrgh, I should've put a ":p"
Yes, I can appreciate that it's hard to take pictures of molecules and that's actually pretty damn awesome.
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That's fantastic. During the summer research I was doing two years ago on magnetic nanoparticles, some of the uber-powerful scanning electron microscope images of my samples displayed hints of the atomic lattice structure, which I thought was awesome in and of itself, but this is whole orders of magnitude beyond that. :)
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THE NANOBOTS ARE HERE!
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Fascinating...
Finally we get see things at a molecular level.
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This is pretty amazing. Of course it doesn't look like much of anything but at this scale it'd be kinda hard to make out details with any clarity.
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There aren't really any "details" to make out at this scale, at least not how we conventionally use that word. What you see in that image are the manifestations of the actual bonds between different atoms, which is already far more than we've ever been able to observe.
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Looking kind of blurry there.
If it was clear then it's faked. :p
An atom isn't solid. Not at this level.
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be interesting to see how long it takes technology to come along that can be attributed to this
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Of course calling it an "image" of an atom is somewhat misleading since interaction with photons at this scale starts to have different meanings than at a macroscopic level. Of course that's assuming they used photons instead of electrons and whatnot.
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None of these really tiny microscopes use any kind of light, because photons don't mean anything at that scale.
"Atomic Force Microscopes" (AFMs) basically work by 'poking' the object and sensing the repulsion force.
"Scanning Tunnelling Microscopes" (STMs) work by passing a tiny, tiny current between the 'probe' and the object. They raise and lower the probe to keep the current at a constant value, and the contours of that motion are the result.
(These explanations are both lies-to-children. If you do a PhD in Atomic Physics you might come to understand what really is going on here, or your head might explode.)
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I've read about AFMs before...
Not really sure how big an advancement this is.
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Wow. I've seen stuff at a scale... somewhat like this, looking at the individual unit cells of clay minerals, but still... wow.
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Wow, i may actually be able to find my sense of shame/guilt with one of those!
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These microscopes are not so good as to see imaginary things Dekker.
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Suppose it was a bit much to ask.... Maybe in the next fifty years then ;7
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These microscopes are not so good as to see imaginary things Dekker.
Old Intelligence maxim: If you look hard enough for something you will find it, whether it actually exists or not.
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These microscopes are not so good as to see imaginary things Dekker.
Old Intelligence maxim: If you look hard enough for something you will find it, whether it actually exists or not.
That applies to more things than recon :doubt:
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Jealous girlfriends for instance :lol:
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cool, now we can measure derek smart's brain
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I don't think this would qualify as "imaging" in optical terms.
Anyways, great job. Makes one wonder how does the Heisenberg uncertainity principle work with these thingies. Now that it would be possible to "see" it.
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Yeah, you're just "seeing" the structure of the bonds themselves, not the actual electrons that are being shared.
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Well, imaging means 'visual representation of', I think there's a bit of picking at carbon nanotubes going on here :p
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Well, imaging means 'visual representation of', I think there's a bit of picking at carbon nanotubes going on here
Ummm, no, in the optical context it does not mean that. In everyday context it does. This actually lead me to think that they have managed to actually image the molecule with some photons sporting insanely short wavelengths.
I was wondering how does the uncertainity principle manifest itself from that depiction of the molecule? By showing the bonds as "tubes", rather than localized electrons? Ditto for protons.
Off the record, I never liked quantum physics (and actively try to forget it), but maybe here could be a chance to catch up what is really going on inside those molecule thingies. Like, it could start to make some sense when you see it.
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Ummm, no, in the optical context it does not mean that. In everyday context it does. This actually lead me to think that they have managed to actually image the molecule with some photons sporting insanely short wavelengths.
:lol:
Only on HLP....
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Off the record, I never liked quantum physics (and actively try to forget it), but maybe here could be a chance to catch up what is really going on inside those molecule thingies. Like, it could start to make some sense when you see it.
I think that's what quantum physics already does. It's just not an intuitive kind of sense.
We want the world to be hard and discrete, but at the quantum level, things may actually be fuzzy.
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Some wishful part of me hopes that that "fuzziness" appears only because we haven't found the universe's focus knob yet. :p
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If there's such a focus knob, the results of the double-slit experiment (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-slit_experiment#When_observed_emission_by_emission) would be very interesting to explain.