Atomic image sets new record for highest resolution | Hacker News Reader

Atomic image sets new record for highest resolution

scientificamerican.com

55 pointspseudolus18 comments

This was discussed a few weeks ago from another source.

Cornell researchers see atoms at record resolution https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2021/05/cornell-researchers...

Cornell researchers see atoms at record resolution - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27247605 - May 2021 (37 comments)

Is there an explanation for what we see? Are prolonged blobs with a single “core” p-orbitals? What are core and non-core parts at all? If it’s a regular crystal with a non-homogeneous lattice, why its formula is so simple and has no dots in it? The image repeats [2-core, 1-core, blob, blob], and that’s PrScO3, seems related, but which elements are placed where?

Nevermind, found it: https://m.dailykos.com/stories/2021/5/22/2031584/-Atoms-view...

Mostly empty space. That always amazes me.

Especially knowing that if they could zoom in further to the subatomic level, the atoms themselves would also be mostly empty space.

IIRC, because of the necessary simplicity of the Bohr Model, it would essentially be a dot -- totally empty, as the electrons exist in a probabilistic cloud. According to some theories[1], there might only be one electron total in the entire universe.

Completely entrancing.

Do you think the electrons could pass between the subatomic bonds of positrons, neutrons, etc? I've never heard an explanation of what might happen.

[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-electron_universe

A common scale for an atom is a professional football stadium. The nucleus would be a marble on the 50 yard line and the remainder of the field and entire stadium would be the electron cloud where you would somewhere find the electron(s). Continuing down the rabbit hole the marble (nucleus) is also mostly made up of empty space.

> Especially knowing that if they could zoom in further to the subatomic level, the atoms themselves would also be mostly empty space.

I don't think this is really true, what you're seein in these picures are the probability distribution of the particles. Zooming in will make the high probability areas bigger until you end up with an area where the probability density is approximately at the maximum and evenly smeared out. The probability cloud does not end in a sharp point or a a singularity, there is a smooth maximum instead. I wouldn't feel comfortable calling that area 'mostly empty space' it just feels like the wrong visual

Isn't the probability cloud still pretty much empty? It may have a greater probability of being in a particular point in denser probability space, but it still is not actually at all of those points. Though I understand it is also not quite the same as most of the space being truly empty in the traditional sense either.

Empty space, but not empty in energy, correct? They wouldn't be held far apart if there was no energy between them.

Not really empty. They float in magnetic field.

In that sense of the word nothing could be said to be truly empty as there are always "fields" of some sort. At minimum there is always a gravitational field. If we are going to use the word "empty" at all, then we are implicitly setting boundaries on the sense of the word to, usually, exclude the four fundamental forces.

The researchers obtained the image using a technique called electron ptychography. It involves shooting a beam of electrons, about a billion of them per second, at a target material. The beam moves infinitesimally as the electrons are fired, so they hit the sample from slightly different angles each time—sometimes they pass through cleanly,

Sounds like x-ray diffraction, but with electrons.

> Sounds like x-ray diffraction, but with electrons.

Well, there's also electron diffraction, but these aren't electron diffraction patterns.

This technique uses higher energy electrons than electron diffraction measurements and that translates to smaller wavelength. It means you can "image" at atomic resolution.

Wow it’s incredible to think this is all we basically are, just empty space. How are we even alive or conscious, we’re just empty space with a few atoms bounding about.

Imo, this "empty space" is a really misleading concept. It's rather a sea of magnetic field that protons and electrons use to form a quasi stable structure.

Btw, the proportion between human body and proton is about the same as between milky way and a star. We're galaxy sized objects, in a sense.

In Iain M. Banks culture novels he describes an effector that manipulates matter at the quantum level. I'm thinking that being able to visualise at this level of magnification it's only a small step to manipulating matter at an atomic level.

> Image shows an electron ptychographic reconstruction

so it's a bit like pictures from space... they are not really what you would see... Imagine if they would show radio waves in all pictures that we take daily ...

> That range is smaller than the length your fingernails grow in a minute

So... do we have a new unit of length here? FPM?

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