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September 19, 2009

The Atom's First Portraits

atompix.jpg
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"For the first time, physicists have photographed the structure of an atom down to its electrons. The pictures, soon to be published in the journal Physical Review B, show the detailed images of a single carbon atom's electron cloud, taken by Ukrainian researchers at the Kharkov Institute for Physics and Technology in Kharkov, Ukraine." -- Research - ISNS

Posted by Vanderleun at September 19, 2009 12:26 AM. This is an entry on the sideblog of American Digest: Check it out.

Your Say

Those are the electron shells: S and P, I believe. Predicted mathematically, they are harmonic standing waves at different energy levels. I can't believe we can see them now. As we detect the states of the electron shells directly, an atom can become a processor switch with the different detectable states as data. This will get interesting....

Posted by: Gray at September 20, 2009 12:17 AM

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