> > how they "feel" the interactions without disturbing them > They can't. I don't know if there are quantum complications at that scale that change this pictur

> > how they "feel" the interactions without disturbing them > They can't. I don't know if there are quantum complications at that scale that change this picture, but my basic idea from classical physics is that Newton's Third Law says the probe can't have a force exerted on it by the sample (action) without also simultaneously itself exerting a force on the sample (reaction). Best part about that line of reasoning is that it leads directly to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle which is definitely in play here. The act of them measuring the position of each of the atoms means that they can't know that the atoms aren't moving because of the force they exerted. On such small molecules they can likely be reasonably certain they haven't introduced any errors, but for a much larger sample they'll start to have issues where the act of measuring is going to change the outcome. What I'm waiting for is when someone figures out how to make diffraction gratings for things in the 5nm area so that you can actually image this stuff with photons rather than with an AFM, that should let them handle larger sheets of graphene, and possibly even look at doped graphene with semiconductor properties to get a really awesome understanding of how and why it works (or doesn't).