The researchers focused on a single molecule of pentacene, which is commonly used in solar cells. The rectangular-shaped organic molecule is made up of 22 carbon atoms and 14 hydrogen atoms.
In the image above the hexagonal shapes of the five carbon rings are clear and even the positions of the hydrogen atoms around the carbon rings can be seen.
To give some perspective, the space between the carbon rings is only 0.14 nanometers across, which is roughly one million times smaller than the diameter of a grain of sand.
Apparently they are more like cells. This looks like a pill surrounded by a ring of carbon atoms. Of course, I may be wrong since this is a 2-d image, and not a 3d image.
Don't get me wrong, I think this is astounding. But it kind of scares me, the fact that it DOES look like what we drew in chemistry. What's next, a picture of an atom? That's what I'd really like to see.
May as well show me a picture of The Universe.
Paul of Dune was so bad it gave me a seizure that dislocated both of my shoulders and prolapsed my anus. ~Pink Snowman
Freakzilla wrote:Don't get me wrong, I think this is astounding. But it kind of scares me, the fact that it DOES look like what we drew in chemistry. What's next, a picture of an atom? That's what I'd really like to see.
................ I exist only to amuse myself ................
I personally feel that this message board, Jacurutu, is full of hateful folks who don't know
how to fully interact with people. ~ "Spice Grandson" (Bryon Merrit) 08 June 2008
Freakzilla wrote:Don't get me wrong, I think this is astounding. But it kind of scares me, the fact that it DOES look like what we drew in chemistry. What's next, a picture of an atom? That's what I'd really like to see.
May as well show me a picture of The Universe.
It looks like this:
No, like this:
Paul of Dune was so bad it gave me a seizure that dislocated both of my shoulders and prolapsed my anus. ~Pink Snowman
Damnit, read this thinking they'd somehow managed to bounce light (electromagnetic waves, not just the visible spectrum) off a molecule.
Anyway that's pretty amazing. And Freak the reason they look like the pictures in chemistry (for me it wasn't the pictures, but naming them!) is due to the method of imaging. They detected the electrostatic forces between the 'tuning fork' and the molecule. The forces would be mostly due to electrons, which obviously surround each atom and also form the links between them.
Ah English, the language where pretty much any word can have any meaning! - A Thing of Eternity
Freakzilla wrote:Don't get me wrong, I think this is astounding. But it kind of scares me, the fact that it DOES look like what we drew in chemistry. What's next, a picture of an atom? That's what I'd really like to see.
May as well show me a picture of The Universe.
A pic of an atom would be very fucked up, depending on the time lapse I assume, because of the probability wave of the electrons. I don't know if we'd get a picture of the state that the electrons are actually in (everywhere at once within the areas of their probability waves - I doubt we'd see this, just measuring by taking a pic would probably collapse the electrons into single points), or the electrons at random positions within their probability waves. Man would that have to be a short exposure!
EDIT:
I can probably find some pics of the universe if you want... they look kinda odd though.
I have a book on particle physics that has a couple of pictures of atoms. One is if gold and is just a blur. Another shows several images of argon over a time lapse and you can see that over time the electron cloud gets larger in radius; so the electrons spend most of their time in the inner areas of the atom.
That last image takes images of scattered electrons or something and then superimposes them so you can see the effect over time; thus the electron cloud is visible.
I imagine thats a similar effect to what IBM did, as the image they took was basically of the electron cloud including bonds.
Ah English, the language where pretty much any word can have any meaning! - A Thing of Eternity
i thought it was only "visible" on quantum levels or something?
from wiki
In quantum mechanics, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle states that certain pairs of physical properties, like position and momentum, cannot both be known to arbitrary precision.
lotek wrote:i thought it was only "visible" on quantum levels or something?
from wiki
In quantum mechanics, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle states that certain pairs of physical properties, like position and momentum, cannot both be known to arbitrary precision.
Does that mean the HP applies to everything and that it just adapts to quantum physics?
It works for Schrödinger's cat.
In 1935 Schrödinger published an essay describing the conceptual problems in QM [Note 1]. A brief paragraph in this essay described the cat paradox.
One can even set up quite ridiculous cases. A cat is penned up in a steel chamber, along with the following diabolical device (which must be secured against direct interference by the cat): in a Geiger counter there is a tiny bit of radioactive substance, so small that perhaps in the course of one hour one of the atoms decays, but also, with equal probability, perhaps none; if it happens, the counter tube discharges and through a relay releases a hammer which shatters a small flask of hydrocyanic acid. If one has left this entire system to itself for an hour, one would say that the cat still lives if meanwhile no atom has decayed. The first atomic decay would have poisoned it. The Psi function for the entire system would express this by having in it the living and the dead cat (pardon the expression) mixed or smeared out in equal parts.
It is typical of these cases that an indeterminacy originally restricted to the atomic domain becomes transformed into macroscopic indeterminacy, which can then be resolved by direct observation. That prevents us from so naively accepting as valid a ``blurred model'' for representing reality. In itself it would not embody anything unclear or contradictory. There is a difference between a shaky or out-of-focus photograph and a snapshot of clouds and fog banks.
We know that superposition of possible outcomes must exist simultaneously at a microscopic level because we can observe interference effects from these. We know (at least most of us know) that the cat in the box is dead, alive or dying and not in a smeared out state between the alternatives. When and how does the model of many microscopic possibilities resolve itself into a particular macroscopic state? When and how does the fog bank of microscopic possibilities transform itself to the blurred picture we have of a definite macroscopic state. That is the measurement problem and Schrödinger's cat is a simple and elegant explanations of that problem.
References:
[1] E. Schrödinger, ``Die gegenwartige Situation in der Quantenmechanik,'' Naturwissenschaftern. 23 : pp. 807-812; 823-823, 844-849. (1935). English translation: John D. Trimmer, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 124, 323-38 (1980), Reprinted in Quantum Theory and Measurement, p 152 (1983).
lotek wrote:i thought it was only "visible" on quantum levels or something?
from wiki
In quantum mechanics, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle states that certain pairs of physical properties, like position and momentum, cannot both be known to arbitrary precision.
Does that mean the HP applies to everything and that it just adapts to quantum physics?
It technically applies to everything, but we migth as well say that it only applies to very tiny things. Newtonian physics work fine in the "middle world" as Dawkins calls the macroscopic world that we perceive as real and understandable.
And yes, I would think that HP would cause big problems trying to properly image an atom.
Weird looking, but rather impressive. I'm usually quite good at thinking in abstraction but I have to I admit I have a hard time imagining one million times smaller than a grain of sand.
"They can chew you up, but they gotta spit you out."
................ I exist only to amuse myself ................
I personally feel that this message board, Jacurutu, is full of hateful folks who don't know
how to fully interact with people. ~ "Spice Grandson" (Bryon Merrit) 08 June 2008
I already had that page open on a tab when I checked the forum just now...
You, sir, have officially freaked me out just now, notwithstanding all your posts that I've read since I started lurking. I'd give you an internet if I weren't too busy constructing a tinfoil hat to seal you out of my brain waves
