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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.
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.
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 structures of the molecule with such accuracy - without actually seeing it!
Now, that's genius!
The marking in Hz is most probably referred to the vibration of the cantilever (see how an AFM works), while the other unit is not Amps but Angstrom (1Å = 0.1nm). The pentacene molecule is long roughly 17Å. This stuff is on another planet of cool.
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.
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!!!"