[HN Gopher] Atomic structure of a glass imaged at last
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Atomic structure of a glass imaged at last
Author : pseudolus
Score : 102 points
Date : 2021-04-02 11:09 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nature.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nature.com)
| nerdponx wrote:
| Warning for anyone browsing: The article is very interesting, but
| there's no "image", just diagrams. It's not clear if there even
| is an "image" as such, or if it was some kind of more general
| experimental confirmation. Maybe there's an image is in the
| source paper, but I don't have institutional access and the paper
| by itself is 200 USD.
| blix wrote:
| 'Imaged' is probably the wrong word to use based on its
| connotations outside the field. What this paper represents is a
| full 3D reconstruction of the atomic configuration of
| disordered solid, and so the result is really a point cloud not
| pixels or voxels.
|
| This sort of atomic scale reconstruction is really hard to
| achieve outside of simulation, and some very cool things can be
| done with it. The 'Short-Range-Order' of disordered or semi-
| ordered structures is really difficult to probe, but may play a
| signficant role in properties.
| tmfi wrote:
| I think this is the preprint article:
| https://arxiv.org/abs/2004.02266
| baq wrote:
| looks like it. page 14 has a figure with a "representative
| experimental image, where some crystalline features are
| visible." the nature paper adds that the scale bar is 2nm.
| pengaru wrote:
| The last 9 pages are even more interesting visually
| jessriedel wrote:
| Suppl. Fig 3. on page 31 shows why the raw images (each
| taken with a slightly different orientation of the
| nanoparticle) are not emphasized by the paper: they all
| look pretty much the same to the human eye. To get useful
| info, you need to do some mathematical processing of the
| subtle differences between them.
| chewmieser wrote:
| The journal subscription is $200 but the paper is $9 to rent or
| $32 to buy without it.
|
| It does look like there's images in the source paper but I'm
| only going off the fuzzy preview:
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03354-0.epdf?no_p...
| [deleted]
| retSava wrote:
| _rent_ _interrobang_
|
| I guess that's a short-term subscription or something?
| scrooched_moose wrote:
| Usually something like 48 hour read-only, and restricted to
| some BS viewer that doesn't allow printing.
|
| Fairly trivial to bypass usually, worst case is just
| printscreening it.
|
| Edit: Ah - View the article PDF and any
| associated supplements and figures for a period of 48
| hours. Article can be synced in the ReadCube Cloud.
| Article can be viewed offline in ReadCube's desktop and
| mobile apps. Article can not be printed.
| Article can not be viewed or saved outside of ReadCube.
| RupertEisenhart wrote:
| Imaging doesn't necessarily produce 'images' in the common
| meaning of the word.
|
| You may think that those 'images' of proteins you see sometimes
| are 'real images', because they are grey and grainy, but they
| are just computer-generated diagrams.
|
| I'm not really sure if this comment has any substance. What do
| you want/expect to see?
|
| "have used a method called atomic-resolution electron
| tomography to determine the position of every atom in a
| nanometre-scale sample of a metallic glass" assuming the
| accompanying diagram is exactly that, it's as much of an image
| as you will ever get, of anything, afaic.
|
| Edit: formatting
| mdpopescu wrote:
| And yet, the number of otherwise informed, intelligent people
| I've talked to who believe that the frequently-used image of
| the Covid virus is an actual picture is astonishing.
| neltnerb wrote:
| Thank you, I was trying for a while to find a way to phrase
| it. All images are reconstructed... if it was helpful I'm
| sure they could have added back the noise they removed.
| [deleted]
| denhaus wrote:
| You might consider the image shown to actually be more
| impressive than a regular 2D image since it is a tomography
| done in 3D. There is far more information in this simulated
| image than in say, an SEM image of graphene. Also, it's hard to
| say what an "image" actually is at nanoscale.
| swiley wrote:
| Holy cow, the goddamn cookie acceptance nag fills all but one
| line of my browser window.
| Arnavion wrote:
| As with most websites with obnoxious cookie banners, the banner
| doesn't show if you don't have JS enabled on the website. The
| article even reads fine without it, including the pictures,
| something that can't be said of the new hipster blog-hosting
| sites that lazy-load images with JS instead of letting the UA
| do it.
| retSava wrote:
| Here, have a free copy of my "kill fixed" bookmarklet. Sorry I
| don't have it in more readable code, but it's small enough to
| parse through so you can verify nothing nefarious resides in
| there. javascript:(function()%7B(function%20(
| )%20%7Bvar%20i%2C%20elements%20%3D%20document.querySelectorAll(
| 'body%20*')%3Bfor%20(i%20%3D%200%3B%20i%20<%20elements.length%3
| B%20i%2B%2B)%20%7Bif%20(getComputedStyle(elements%5Bi%5D).posit
| ion%20%3D%3D%3D%20'fixed')%20%7Belements%5Bi%5D.parentNode.remo
| veChild(elements%5Bi%5D)%3B%7D%7D%7D)()%7D)()
| qualityforge wrote:
| great work
| jonplackett wrote:
| Why do almost all scientific articles - especially from nature
| and new scientist - not have images or videos to show the damn
| thing everyone is so excited about?
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(page generated 2021-04-02 23:01 UTC)