Quote:
Originally Posted by troypiggo
My usual checks for hoaxes didn't turn up anything quick. Did turn up more on the AFM they mention, it does look fair dinkum.
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Supporting some other IBMers, should I email the guys at Zurich Labs and tell them you think it might be a hoax?
As I said in the thread Humayun mentioned:
"Another example of why the money spent on research lets IBM register more patents every year than any other company."
I'm not a physicist (1 year at uni), so take the following conjectures with a grain of salt.
Atoms are orders of magnitude smaller than visible light. The Van der Waal radius of carbon is around 170 picometres versus 380 to 750 nanometres.
How do you hold a molecule still while you take its picture? I'd guess that quantum scattering and vibtrations produce the fuzziness, even at the temperatures they are using. If the molecule is not square on, it is probably only something of the order of .1 Angstrom off.
Love to see someone try to get their images that flat.