[HN Gopher] Cornell researchers see atoms at record resolution
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Cornell researchers see atoms at record resolution
Author : filoeleven
Score : 108 points
Date : 2021-05-22 15:46 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (news.cornell.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (news.cornell.edu)
| robocat wrote:
| And for a limited time only, ptycho.com is still available!
| joe-collins wrote:
| I am awestruck that the direction of the blur/motion further
| reveals the crystalline structure:
|
| https://i.imgur.com/g7A24w6.png
|
| This is the coolest image I've seen in a long while.
| aidos wrote:
| Great spot!
| Vaslo wrote:
| It will always amaze me that 100 years ago when microscopes were
| quite primitive that physical chemists could predict the shapes
| of the electron shells. The knew the inner ones were spherical, a
| little further out were dumbbell shaped, etc. Now pictures like
| this help add more context to these more complex structures, but
| the hybrid dumbbell shape of the shell is easily recognizable.
| imoverclocked wrote:
| I love how the meaning of "atom" is evolving with our
| understanding of the world. The origin is from that which is
| uncuttable/indivisible while our modern understanding of
| physical atoms are things made up of sub-atomic particles. Even
| in CS we have "atomic operations" which can be made up of
| multiple instructions.
|
| I wonder how we will define "atom" in another 100 years.
| treeman79 wrote:
| Always thought we stopped to soon. At some point things may
| cease to be divisible. Plank scale is still pretty deep down
| the well.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| Or perhaps they'll be some form of Mobius strip-like
| string-particle item that you can divide in two but still
| have a single item afterwards. Like self-healing strings
| that you divide in one [set of] dimension[s] and which
| simultaneously close up in some other dimension.
|
| Whether such an item is mathematically possible is left as
| an exercise for the reader ;o) (just an idea I had).
| whatshisface wrote:
| An atomic operation is a sequence of steps that are
| indivisible in their _effects._ That 's a return to the
| original definition of "atom." Atoms as constituents of
| molecules are the exception from the trend and a misnomer.
| ta988 wrote:
| And on your computer, your cpu is doing a lot of stuff
| during that atomic operation even cutting it in smaller
| parts...
| imoverclocked wrote:
| Mostly, I agree. However, in a multitasking environment
| anything that is multiple instructions can be significantly
| split up in time. While not the primary effect of the op,
| the op itself is still divided which can have other non-
| negligible secondary effects on a large system.
| tooltower wrote:
| At first my reaction was: "No way, it has to be a lot more
| recent than a 100 years." But then I realized that 1920s was a
| 100 years ago.
|
| The "History" section of this page was interesting:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molecular_orbital_theory It
| apparently took most of 30s and 40s for those theories to
| mature, and the ideas of the then new quantum mechanics to be
| applied to molecules.
| fallingfrog wrote:
| Beautiful image, truly amazing work.
| Zenst wrote:
| "Ptychography works by scanning overlapping scattering patterns
| from a material sample and looking for changes in the overlapping
| region"
|
| Interesting, we use multi-patterning to produce silicon already
| to get the light down to scale for process nodes - this is kinda
| the reverse and do wonder if some of this research may have
| applications in silicon production.
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