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IBM Images a Single Molecule
chrb writes "New Scientist is reporting that researchers at IBM Zurich have managed to image a single molecule in detail for the first time. In the images of a pentacene molecule, the bonds between the carbon atoms are visible as five linked rings."
I guess I expected it to look a little less like a High-school textbook drawing of the bonds. The only thing that would make it moreso is if little Cs were set next to each atom.
Miyamoto Musashi would be intrigued.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
Next story: IBM is sued by the IOC.
The molecule blinked right when the snapshot was taken.
So if the Pantacene is made of Benzene and the Benzene is C6H6, what is that gray flat smooth material that the molecules are sitting on top of in the second picture? Is this simply due to a focus so incredibly tuned that you can't see past the Pentacene molecules? I would expect that to be a field of bumps and crazy random shapes because it has to be made of some molecule or atom, right? How would they finish the slide/table/surface of that so accurately? I'm used to seeing that when you see bacteria or viruses with an electron microscope, what is in effect here that we don't see an alien landscape back-dropping these molecules? I'm not calling into question the authenticity of the image, just curious if anyone knows.
My work here is dung.
Good job reading the article.
FTA:
Thanks to specialised microscopes, we have long been able to see the beauty of single atoms. But strange though it might seem, imaging larger molecules at the same level of detail has not been possible â" atoms are robust enough to withstand existing tools, but the structures of molecules are not. Now researchers at IBM have come up with a way to do it.
emphasis mine.
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4 calling birds
3 french hens
2 turtle doves
and a partridge in a pair tree?
This is a very impressive image that's in the same league as the famous Hubble deep field image. Both images confirm what was already known, but in a more direct and visual way.
Flourescent (adj): smelling like ground wheat.
For anyone who wants the original paper, published in Science today, it may be found here. The abstract is free.
So what is a molecule, then? At what size does it become big enough that it's easy?
This image, for example, shows individual atoms, not in much greater number than the pentacene, although they are attached to a bigger object and can't roll around. These and these, however, seem similar to the pentacene. It's still impressive and cutting edge, just not that new.
They're not similar in the least. Your examples use lattices, which are more stable than individual molecules. RTFA already.
(inb4 "rtfa? you must be new here")
Single strands of synthetic polymers and DNA have been imageable for many years. I imagine many of us on slashdot have personally acquired images of these single molecules before.
"I zero-index my hamsters" - Willtor (147206)
It's not that the molecule itself needs to be big enough, it's the structure of it. The stuff holding it together. The stuff holding the molecule together could not withstand the instruments, but now they've developed a way to do it.
So, does this mean for all those years when we see a modelled structure of a molecule, it has been theory as one has never been observed? So now, theory has been proven and is now science as it has now been observed?
What do you do with 5 rings chained together?
First rule of holes; When in one, stop digging.
I see no lattice.
Unless you refer to the lattice under the molecule. They don't float.
Atoms are mostly empty space. The photo is of the electric field caused by the electrons.
This photo is better. The article says it is a 20-hour time exposure. The photo was available through a Reddit story yesterday.
The picture is marked in units of HERTZ and AMPS?
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
...we may finally be able to see what color the tinker-toy rods and balls are on pentacene.
The summary and the linked article are misleading. This is not the "first time a single molecule has been imaged." It's the first time a single molecule has been imaged using AFM. Scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) has been used for about a decade now to image single molecules. Just a simple google image search will show you lots of them. My favorite is this guy who is imaging something he's calling "nanocars" which are single molecules. These finding are in no way less impressive due to resolution they've achieved, but you really don't need to overstate the conclusions by making these classic science-journalism blunders.
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Why do I have the sudden urge to play Arkanoid?
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the structures of the molecule with such accuracy - without actually seeing it!
Now, that's genius!
Wow, this is amazing. It looks much like what I'd expect from high school chemistry all those years ago :)
Watson and Crick wouldn't have had that much trouble with DNA if they had these tools... will the IBM scientists be able to do this for more complex molecules? As a complete layman in Chemistry, I think I recall that there are lots of work that involve the spatial geometry of molecules.
There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.
I likely would have had this post up about 20 earlier, but I've just managed to pick myself off the floor after taking a look at the photo. As a chemist, I personally find the verification of theory a significant milestone in our understanding. It's one thing to have a theory, and then through somewhat serendipitous means, verify the theory, but to have an actual photo, brings it to a new level.
Greg
Yes, I do have a life outside the lab, but maybe not as much of one as I once thought.
IBM has their faults, but it's good to see a company doing cutting edge RnD and producing results.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Those are a series of nanotubes, not a molecule on jmtour.com
I saw no picture of a single molecule on your google link, either.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Moar information: http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/28267.wss
I am not a nuclear physicist so maybe my question is understandable...
I thought that when you get to the molecular level The uncertainty principle would start to take effect. Very large molecules like DNA might be observable but what about smaller molecules? At what size scale would the uncertainty principle make observation impossible?
The resolution of the image of pentacene generated by the researchers is what this news is about.
You'll notice from your last link that there's a scale given. Roughly 30 pixels equate to 3nm. Pentacene is 1.4nm long.
Your argument is the equivalent of saying graphical output at 1080p is worthless because we already had CGA in the 80s.
How far off can destructive digitization be now?
For example with 3D electron microscopy. It requires multiple copies of the same molecule on a chilled plate, take a progressive electron microscopy scan of the plate, and the 3D image is reconstructed from the multiple images. Individual atoms can often be identified by relative size. It's been awhile since I've looked at this but I can only assume the field has progressed since then.
"The ability to delude yourself may be an important survival tool" - Jane Wagner -
The picture is all very impressive, but is there some practical application for this technique?
Can it be used to create biodiesel?
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
In other news, the International Olympic Committee has filed a trademark infringement suit against IBM and God, showing that pentacine resembles the trademarked "interlocking five ring" design of the Olympic Games.
[
In the images of a pentacene molecule, the bonds between the carbon atoms are visible as five linked rings."
The Olympic Committee has decided to sue IBM Zurich for piracy.
45nm is 450 angstrom, so you can see by the 20 angstrom ruler in one of the pictures that chip design is getting pretty small. In fact, you can see the atoms lined up in the traces of chips!
http://i.zdnet.com/blogs/afm-bpm-e-beam.jpg
We take this model for granted. It's one thing for a handy, convenient model to hold Balls in place with sticks and the you connect your large blue Oxygen balls to the tiny Red hydrogen balls and call it a model.
It's quite another that it's the actual, physical representation of it.
We look at atoms and imagine electron shells -- that's really a domain that electrons spend their time in.
However, physicists currently have this model of particles being particles. Now if a solid, frozen substance under the head of a pin, however, is detecting the structures of "most common region of covalent bonding" as actual "stick like" structures -- when in all rights, the interference of the probe should be pushing the electron around it -- then maybe we need to rethink this concept of particles.
>> My own belief, and I'm likely to get slammed for this on Slashdot by folks who think about physics and chemistry all day -- is that EVERYTHING is a field. Particles are fields with pinpoint connections to other dimensions and that exhibit mass. But what you would expect, from a field, touching a field, is that the "domains" of the electron bonding, would appear solid.
If you really think about it, the electron and proton in these pictures are so small, that the distance from the electron is as far from the proton vs. its size, that it would be like a period on this sentence on a football field.
THAT any of these molecules is solid, means that the potential fields where the electron COULD BE, have some disruption on space, and that the patterns of force of the probe, interfere with the patterns of force on the studied atom.
If Atoms were really very tiny particles, we would SOMETIMES see a structure and sometimes not -- because the probe's electron and the sampled atom's electron would not be occupying the same location most of the time.
>> It's a bit like asking the basic question: Why are things opaque and why are they solid? Fields themselves are the only things that could be stopping the probe. And if physics recognizes the "strong and weak force" -- are those really propagated by particles, or is it a disturbance in space itself. I'm one of the anachronisms who still believes in the aether, I suppose -- think of Dark Matter, as the New Aether.
>>"ad space available -- low rates!!!"
In a follow-up session, the Zurich researchers announced that by this time next year, they hope to have imaged two molecules. "We won't stop there," said one scientist, "We plan to image ten, then a thousand, and so on until we are able to image an entire piece of, say, fairy-cake."
its a great day for america everybody!
It's interesting to see how the electrons bunch up at the ends. The aromatic delocalization clearly equalizes the energy levels of the bonds, making the entire molecule behave like a conductor, and concentrate charge at the extremes. Just as in a metal, electrons loosely float in the conduction band, it looks they do the same in pentacene, illustrating why graphite is such a good conductor.
Apparently there IS no Who in Whoville.
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...looks like the outer "honeycombs" are bigger than the inner ones. Can somebody work out why? :-P
This is a funny post. Seriously, I bet the guy thinks the moon landing is fake too.