Most Detailed Photos of an Atom Yet

BuzzSkyline writes "Ukrainian researchers have managed to take pictures of atoms that reveal structure of the electron clouds surrounding carbon nuclei in unprecedented detail. Although the images offer no surprises (they look much like the sketches of electron orbitals included in high school science texts), this is the first time that anyone has directly imaged atoms at this level, rather than inferring the structure of the orbitals from indirect measurements such as electron or X-ray interferometry."

Comments

Speaking as a chemist

[PatrickThomson]

This is amazing. We'd theorised orbitals to exist, and they worked very well. We could calculate the shapes of molecules and make detailed predictions that came true to 10 decimal places. Quantum mechanics as applied to electrons in atoms is the most successful and the most rigorously tested theory ever developed.

And yet, to finally see a real orbital, not a simulation. Looks like a 1s and a 2p, right there for the looking!

Re:Speaking as a chemist

[anarchyboy]

Depends what you mean by real, certainly splitting your many electron wave function into orbitals works well and allows an accurate approximation of the system as a whole. The orbitals do form a basis of functions for the system (with some acceptable approximations) so while your quantum state is the whole thing you can think of it as being built of oribitals. This is true in a mathematical sense its an expansion of the quantum function as a set of orbital functions. This is as valid as any other expansion like a taylor or powerseries expansion. So orbitals are real enough in that sense. You can then calculate observables for the individual electrons since your operators will act only on the single electron and your oribtals are normalised the rest of the electrons essentialy go away and you can calculate things like the average radial ditance etc and build up pictures of what that electron "looks like". Since the orbital functions are calculated (numerically) as a multi electron system even though the end product allows you to look at individual electrons as orbitals the overall wave function (all the orbitals combined) is still a very accurate picture of the system

In fact the experimental evidence showing a physical picture of these orbitals just goes to show that this is in fact a very sensible and useful way of picturing your atom.

Similar Pictures From Switzerland

[Maddog Batty]

"Leo Gross and his colleagues at IBM in Zurich, Switzerland, modified the AFM technique to make the most detailed image yet of pentacene, an organic molecule consisting of five benzene rings"

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17699-microscopes-zoom-in-on-molecules-at-last.html

 

Re:Similar Pictures From Switzerland

[L4t3r4lu5]

Your article is much more impressive, IMHO. All I see in the original story is three blue blobs. You could have told me it was false-colour cellular mitosis, and I'd have believed you. I understand that the detail in the story is much higher (imaging one atom instead of a whole molecule) but seeing hexagonal Benzene rings with my own eyes just excites me more.