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New Type of Atomic Microscope On the Way
Iddo Genuth writes "Researchers at the Surface Science Laboratory at Universidad Autonoma de Madrid have created an ultrasmooth mirror that could be used to create a revolutionary new atomic microscope within the next several years. The new atomic microscope — using helium atoms for imaging — has the potential to provide the same resolution as existing electron microscopes but without many of the problems which have plagued them for years."
http://mailman.mcmaster.ca/mailman/private/cdn-nucl-l/0712/msg00004.html or did we find more to use in microscopes and other things, like balloons?
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I'm all for scientific progress, but I can't help but find it unfortunate that the key element to making this new microscope is helium
seems like my voice will not sound like a chipmunk's even sooner if this becomes a popular standard
My father has been working with Helium Ion Microscopes for a few years now - not the same as helium atoms of course, but the goals are the same (avoiding damage to the sample, improved resolution, firing a single concentrated beam of atoms instead of spewing electrons, etc). And they're... beta. Improving, but decidedly beta.
How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
This is what it would be like, if the majority of people were athiests.
ATHIEST KID: Mom, I'm going to go fuck a hooker.
ATHIEST MOM: Okay, son.
ATHIEST KID: Afterwards, I'm going to go smoke pot with my friends, since it's "not addictive."
ATHIEST MOM: Okay, come home soon!
The athiest kid leaves the room. The father comes home from work several minutes later.
ATHIEST DAD: Hey!
ATHIEST MOM: Hi, honey! I'm pregnant again. I guess I'll just get another abortion, since "fetuses don't count as human life."
ATHIEST DAD: Okay, get as many abortions as you want!
ATHIEST MOM: Oh, and don't go in the bedroom.
ATHIEST DAD: Why not?
ATHIEST MOM: There are two gay men fucking eachother in there.
ATHIEST DAD: Why are they here?
ATHIEST MOM: I wanted to watch them do it for awhile. They just aren't finished yet.
ATHIEST DAD: Okay, that's fine with me!
Suddenly, their neighbor runs into the house.
ATHIEST NEIGHBOR: Come quick, there's a Christian outside!
ATHIEST MOM: We'll be right there!
The athiest couple quickly put on a pair of black robes and hoods. They then exit the house, and run into the street, where a Christian is nailed to a large, wooden X. He is being burned alive. A crowd of athiests stand around him, all wearing black robes and hoods.
RANDOM ATHIEST: Damn you, Christian! We hate you! We claim to be tolerant of all religions. But we really hate your's! That's because we athiests are hypocritical like that! Die, Christian!
THE END
Scary, isn't it?
I like my microscopes made out of several billion atoms thank you very much.
With this atomic microscope you can finally see your penises you fuckin nerds!! HAHAHAHAHAHA!!
This isn't a new type of microscope, this is actually kind of old. I was working in a lab doing this as an undergrad in 94. It really only works with very smooth (as in atomic level smooth) crystalline structures. You can build 3-d data, that's for sure, but only by growing them and watching them build as you shoot helium at it (via rotating the mirror and watching the diffraction). Purely surface chemistry "simple" crystals. Unless for things like protein structures, where X-ray is the way to go.
What these guys did was merely figure out a way to reflect helium better, so you get more exact data the first time around, rather than having to run the same test over and over and doing averages to get rid of the noise. Good for science, sure, but hardly a new microscope.
Burn Hollywood Burn
...that the bacteria will have high-pitched voices?
When Google said it would limit the length of time it kept records on people, privacy advocates thought this was a step in the right direction. That the public puts up with any tracking whatsoever amazes me.
In the news this week, AT&T and Verizon said they won't track users unless users want to be tracked. I found this paragraph in this Washington Post article to be the best summary, and also quite revealing:
Companies have built an array of techniques to record the actions of users as they move across the Internet--namely tracking "cookies," "beacons," and "deep packet inspection," which essentially looks at every packet of information delivered on an Internet line. Those tactics allow companies to record what Web sites customers visit, what products they purchase, even what newspaper articles they read. Advertisers use this information to determine what ads to deliver to that person's computer.
And of course, this information would be quite useful in a police state or to merely curb dissent. The potential for abuse alone should have the public up in arms.
But we know what this information is actually used for--selling crap--and it seems as if the docile public is happy with this sort of thing. I say that because the marketing folks who dream up these schemes are also members of the public and seem content to be tracked like a dog.
The fact is, the whole system was put in place to find a way to sell you sketchy products that probably wouldn't be advertised at all under normal circumstances. My wife describes it best: "To sell us more junk we don't need."
The holy grail of advertising is to deliver a targeted message to a specific person for a specific product that that person might buy, or would definitely be a customer for. Originally, this sort of targeting was institutionalized by demographic marketing. Advertisers discovered that various neighborhoods based on location and property values would contain more people of a certain taste or income level to which they could target ads. In other words, you sell more Cadillacs in the high-rent district.
Then came the notion of psychographics, which was perfected by the direct-marketing business. This idea posits that knowing where you live is important, but not as important as knowing about you as a person. Soon huge database companies came along selling mailing lists of people who subscribed to, say, a combination of Good Housekeeping, Modern Bride, and Guns & Ammo. They could be targeted, for something like gun locks to protect the new family.
This sort of targeted marketing was the most cost-effective way to get a message to someone who would more likely than not be interested in a specific product. As the cost of marketing increased, this became more and more important. And while spam showed the way to very cost-effective marketing, targeted marketing was still the best way for getting your message to the right person.
Unfortunately, at some point--which was passed years ago--these practices became so intrusive as to impinge on personal privacy. And while some individuals have said there's no such thing as privacy anymore, this is only because the public isn't demanding privacy.
It sounds good on paper to argue, "What difference does gathering one bit of data make if you're doing nothing wrong?" But if our privacy is violated, we're open to truly invasive ridicule. Does the head of the Democratic Party in some town want anyone to know he or she loves Rush Limbaugh or even listens to talk radio? Do you want the whole world to know that when you drink milk you fart uncontrollably in public? Do you want your boss to know that you have six toes? Do you want everyone to know that you have hemorrhoids? I mean, really.
Privacy has nothing to do with illegal activities that you want to hide. It's about the "none of your friggin' business" principle of life. And nobody needs Google--or anyone else for that matter--taking all of our surfing records, habits, and personal information and analyzing it to death to make an onerous dossier just to sell us more crap we don't need. It's not healthy for the society and should be abolished.
So abolish it already!
What exactly are the problems that have plagued electron microscopes for years?
has the potential to provide the same resolution as existing electron microscopes but without many of the problems which have plagued them for years
YES! Finally!!!
Property is theft.
ultrasmooth
Claiming to be pedantic on Slashdot is asking for trouble
Apparently not as thick as the layer of lead in the writer's brain.
The group working at Cambridge has a detailed description: http://www-sp.phy.cam.ac.uk/research/mirror.php3 I was a little surprised to read this as being new. Although the He microscope, as it is envisioned, has not yet been built, the Cambridge group has been working on the idea for a while. I'm not sure how much of an improvement the techniques of the group in the story are - for producing flat mirrors - than what is already being used at Cambridge. The Si surfaces they use are already pretty flat. As far as I understood it the most critical area for development was the detector.
Conservation of angular momentum makes the world go round.
Can we burn this one?
Jack Thompson
5721 Riviera Dr
Coral Gables FL 33146
305-666-4366
amendmentone@comcast.net
Just blow it up to make it bigger. It's much easier.