[Flipside]

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.

[redsniper]

Looking kind of blurry there.

[Flipside]

Yeeesh...

Sometimes I could weep...

Edit : Though I suppose it is a good example of how nonchalant society has become to scientific advancement.

[Sushi]

SHOPPED! 

Just kidding. That's actually pretty cool.

[redsniper]

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 ""

Yes, I can appreciate that it's hard to take pictures of molecules and that's actually pretty damn awesome.

[Mongoose]

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.

[blackhole]

THE NANOBOTS ARE HERE!

[Pred the Penguin]

Fascinating...
Finally we get see things at a molecular level.

[Liberator]

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. 

[Mongoose]

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.

[karajorma]

Looking kind of blurry there.

If it was clear then it's faked.

An atom isn't solid. Not at this level.

[headdie]

be interesting to see how long it takes technology to come along that can be attributed to this

[Ghostavo]

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.

[Tomo]

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.)

[Pred the Penguin]

I've read about AFMs before... 
Not really sure how big an advancement this is.

[Black Wolf]

Wow. I've seen stuff at a scale... somewhat like this, looking at the individual unit cells of clay minerals, but still... wow.

[Colonol Dekker]

Wow, i may actually be able to find my sense of shame/guilt with one of those!

[Ghostavo]

These microscopes are not so good as to see imaginary things Dekker.

[Colonol Dekker]

Suppose it was a bit much to ask.... Maybe in the next fifty years then

[NGTM-1R]

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.