Atomic bonds are too small to see, right? Well, what do you suppose THIS is a picture of!?!?!?
That B&W structure is an actual image of a molecule and its atomic bonds. The first of its kind, in fact, and a breakthrough for the crazy IBM scientists in Zurich who spent 20 straight hours staring at the “specimen”–which in this case was a 1.4 nanometer-long pentacene molecule comprised of 22 carbon atoms and 14 hydrogen atoms.
You can actually make out each of those atoms and their bonds, and it’s thanks to this: An atomic force microscope.
hat tip: Ben
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or Paperback
*Please note:
Links to books and other items on this page and elsewhere on Greg Ladens' blog may send you to Amazon, where I am a registered affiliate. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases, which helps to fund this site.
that’s pretty amazing.
Nice find, Greg! I’m going to write this up (with the physics) too!
I’ll have to look at those details – even at incredibly low temperatures there is still a lot of molecular movement (especially over 20 hours) and there is also the matter of the certainty in the positioning of that needle on the AFM, the roughness of the surface that the molecule is on etc.
Yes, thanks Greg; and Ethan, please do!
That looks suspiciously like a B&W photo of a starting light for a dragster car race.
Well, maybe for very tiny dragsters.
Nonsense. That’s obviously a picture of a Mutant Cyborg Caterpillar. A New and Terrible SECRET GOVERNMENT WEAPON.
FAIL! Too late Science Blogger, I saw this in my news scanning earlier today and emailed it out to friends the minute it showed in my BBC RSS feed. Nice to see I’m not the only one fascinated.
What’s the rush?
That’s amazing and quite inspiring. I can’t blame him for staring at it.
This gives us a directview of molecular bond sequencing all we need do is supply the projected dipodal fields to realize the third dimensional image
That is so cool!
Very neat! How did they hold it still?