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Cornell researchers see atoms at record resolution
- Vaslo 5y agoIt 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.
- tooltower 5y agoAt 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 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.
- aaronbrethorst 5y ago"Student describes the ‘90s as 'the late 1900s' and now we all feel old" — https://mashable.com/article/late-1900s-student-professor-burn-tweet/ https://mashable.com/article/late-1900s-student-professor-bu... :-\
- imoverclocked 5y agoI 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 5y agoAlways thought we stopped to soon. At some point things may cease to be divisible. Plank scale is still pretty deep down the well.
- pbhjpbhj 5y agoOr 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).
- tobmlt 5y agoI like it. There is a super fun ted(?) talk, that I can’t seem to find, with a guy constructing and cutting Möbius strips, and variations on that theme. Pretty unintuitive what a little twist can do! ...and I seemingly still cannot find it. A google will reveal many such videos, I think, but no time to search them out.
- filoeleven 5y agoMatt Parker has demonstrated this at least a couple of times on YouTube, I bet he’s who you’re thinking of. It is surprising! https://youtu.be/-u-O_2Hz82I https://youtu.be/-u-O_2Hz82I
- tobmlt 5y agoI think I was thinking of a Matt Parker video. I hadn’t seen this one though, thanks!
- officialjunk 5y agoperhaps you are thinking of this video from Numberphile with Tadashi Tokieda https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wKV0GYvR2X8 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wKV0GYvR2X8
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- joe-collins 5y agoI am awestruck that the direction of the blur/motion further reveals the crystalline structure: https://i.imgur.com/g7A24w6.png https://i.imgur.com/g7A24w6.png This is the coolest image I've seen in a long while.
- aidos 5y agoGreat spot!
- bradrn 5y agoI’m curious to know where you found this image? Because I looked through the paper (https://arxiv.org/abs/2101.00465 https://arxiv.org/abs/2101.00465) and couldn’t find it…
- joe-collins 5y agoI edited the image in the article. It appears to be cropped from Fig 2A on page 11.
- bradrn 5y agoAh, thank you! I had assumed the white lines were present in the original image.
- _Microft 5y agoNot quite, a crystal is a periodic structure which is defined by lattice vectors and the content of the corresponding unit cell. The pattern drawn in the linked image does not match this definition. Imagine it like tiling a floor. In the simplest case, all tiles are the same and the unit cell is a "primitive cell". The way they are layed out gives the lattice vectors. Now if you are using two differently styled tiles (e.g. a checkerboard pattern of black and white tiles), then the unit cell is now a "conventional cell" and consists of these two tiles. The lattice vectors now point accordingly from one tile of a type to the next one of the same type (e.g. white->white). You need two vectors that do not point in exactly the same direction to be able to cover the floor in two dimensions. Remember, you have to be able to cover the plane by moving the unit cell by integer multiples of the lattice vectors if you did it correctly. Edit: this might be it: https://i.imgur.com/75ltMjb.png https://i.imgur.com/75ltMjb.png If you shift this pattern by any integer multiple of these vectors, the pattern that it comes to lay upon will look the same as the one that was shifted. Here are some additional links. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bravais_lattice https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bravais_lattice https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_cell https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_cell
- fallingfrog 5y agoBeautiful image, truly amazing work.
- Zenst 5y ago"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.
- robocat 5y agoAnd for a limited time only, ptycho.com is still available!
- milleramp 5y agoVery cool. The image looks to have a pair of atoms but the material is PrScO3, I would expect to see three. Maybe someone more knowledgeable in chemistry could explain this?
- mensetmanusman 5y agoDownload full text to see a diagram: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/275748074_Refinement_of_the_crystal_structure_of_praseodymium_orthoscandate_PrScO3/fulltext/56535c3e08ae4988a7af8903/Refinement-of-the-crystal-structure-of-praseodymium-orthoscandate-PrScO3.pdf?origin=publication_detail https://www.researchgate.net/publication/275748074_Refinemen...
- mensetmanusman 5y agoPraseodymium orthoscandate (PrScO3) is beautiful.
- nerdponx 5y agoI tried to find info about this compound but only got links to various articles reporting this story...
- potiuper 5y agohttps://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/52920025.pdf https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/52920025.pdf
- rsfern 5y agoI skimmed a couple of the top hits on GScholar, seems like it’s mostly used as an epitaxial substrate for growing thin film functional materials like BaSnO3. Crystals that would be interesting to research as potential ferroelectric or multiferroic devices, that sort of thing Edit: I found the context in this paper really helpful / interesting: https://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.2396920 https://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.2396920
- psychomugs 5y agoAlternative rock album cover in 3... 2... 1... /s(?)
- meepmorp 5y agoFunny, I immediately thought prog rock album cover.
- imvetri 5y agowhat's the empty space between the atoms made of?
- villasv 5y agoNothing (or a probabilistic electron cloud? I don’t think it counts as “being made of” something in a meaningful way)
- redis_mlc 5y ago1) The old answer was some kind of ether. 2) The new answer is some kind of quantum field, with particles popping into and out of existence spontaneously.
- colechristensen 5y agowhen you’re at that scale you need to have a good idea of what you mean by “made of” before you can get an answer. You end up trying to figure out what it means for a space to be occupied or unoccupied and coming to the conclusion that space is either 100% occupied or 0% occupied but not really anything in between which isn’t just an arbitrary threshold