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Image of a Single, Trapped Atom

Unes

Active Member
Premium Member
"Now, can we "see" atoms? This depends, as I already hinted at, what you mean by "see". If you mean "make a picture in visible light", then you can't do that. In microscopy, there is a rule of thumb that the smallest things you can distinguish with a perfectly engineered microscope have to have a size about half the wavelength of the light you're shining at it. The more exact version of this is known as the Abbé difraction limit. Visible light has wavelength of about 400-700 nanometres. This is of course about 4000-7000 times as much as the diameter of the atom, so there is indeed no way we can see an atom with a (diffraction) microscope using light. [As suggested in the comments, there are a number of methods to get around Abbé's diffraction limit using, in parts, very different techniques to usual microscopy. It seems, however, that a resolution of atoms is not achieved yet.]"
well, since this claim is made by some credible scientists, then everybody is trying to justify this claim with some rational. In nature each atom is absorbing and emitting light all the time, but our eyes cannot see them because our eyes cannot see object that small, small objects are needed to get magnified in order our eyes can see them. And this picture does not talk about any magnification. This seems to me it is a hoax.
 

Twilight Hue

Twilight, not bright nor dark, good nor bad.
well, since this claim is made by some credible scientists, then everybody is trying to justify this claim with some rational. In nature each atom is absorbing and emitting light all the time, but our eyes cannot see them because our eyes cannot see object that small, small objects are needed to get magnified in order our eyes can see them. And this picture does not talk about any magnification. This seems to me it is a hoax.
I thought of that myself. You can see an "atom" but not the atoms of the apparatus holding it. Atoms are considered pretty much the same in size. There's no real large or small atom from my understanding. Just varying atomic shells indicating it's elemental designation.
 

Skwim

Veteran Member
I thought of that myself. You can see an "atom" but not the atoms of the apparatus holding it. Atoms are considered pretty much the same in size. There's no real large or small atom from my understanding. Just varying atomic shells indicating it's elemental designation.

Atomic radius of the Helium atom: 31 pm (trillionths of a meter)
Atomic radius of the Cesium atom: 298 pm (almost 10 times larger than the helium atom)
source

Note that the Strontium atom has a radius pm of 219.




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Unes

Active Member
Premium Member
Atomic radius of the Helium atom: 31 pm (trillionths of a meter)
Atomic radius of the Cesium atom: 298 pm (almost 10 times larger than the helium atom)
source

Note that the Strontium atom has a radius pm of 219.
"Most viruses that have been studied have a diameter between 20 and 300 nanometres. Some filoviruses have a total length of up to 1400 nm; their diameters are only about 80 nm."

I have not heard that anybody claiming that they can see a virus with their naked eyes, even though the virus is roughly 1000 times bigger than the Cesium atom.
 

siti

Well-Known Member
This seems to me it is a hoax.
It's not a hoax - its a mediafied report - what you see is not an object (an 'atom') reflecting light but emitted light emerging from a single atom (actually a positively charged strontium 'ion' held near stationary in a vacuum by the apparatus) and spreading out in all directions. The diameter of the cone of emitted light reaching the camera lens appears to me to be of the order of about 0.1mm which is about 6 orders of magnitude bigger than an atom and 3 or 4 orders of magnitude bigger than a virus. Anyway, the point is you are not looking at an atom but a cone of light emitted from an atom.
 

Twilight Hue

Twilight, not bright nor dark, good nor bad.
Atomic radius of the Helium atom: 31 pm (trillionths of a meter)
Atomic radius of the Cesium atom: 298 pm (almost 10 times larger than the helium atom)
source

Note that the Strontium atom has a radius pm of 219.


.

The hard thing is how they were able to determine the size of an isolated atom. It's much easier when atoms are adjacent. You can't measure isolated atoms.

Size of Atoms
 

Unes

Active Member
Premium Member
It's not a hoax - its a mediafied report - what you see is not an object (an 'atom') reflecting light but emitted light emerging from a single atom (actually a positively charged strontium 'ion' held near stationary in a vacuum by the apparatus) and spreading out in all directions. The diameter of the cone of emitted light reaching the camera lens appears to me to be of the order of about 0.1mm which is about 6 orders of magnitude bigger than an atom and 3 or 4 orders of magnitude bigger than a virus. Anyway, the point is you are not looking at an atom but a cone of light emitted from an atom.
It is claimed "Image of a Single, Trapped Atom". How can we accept this image of about 0.1 mm to be the image of a single atom, without any magnification? This is a contradiction of a sort, you might say this image was generated by the emission from a single ion, when that single ion was excited so much that it emitted huge number of photons, but is that really present the image of an atom without any magnification? When Large Hadron Collider at cern gives the picture of an event, that is not the picture of a proton, that is the picture of the proton that it has been energized a great deal.
 

siti

Well-Known Member
It is claimed "Image of a Single, Trapped Atom". How can we accept this image of about 0.1 mm to be the image of a single atom, without any magnification? This is a contradiction of a sort, you might say this image was generated by the emission from a single ion, when that single ion was excited so much that it emitted huge number of photons, but is that really present the image of an atom without any magnification? When Large Hadron Collider at cern gives the picture of an event, that is not the picture of a proton, that is the picture of the proton that it has been energized a great deal.
OK - but my point was its not a hoax, just a case of over stating things in the media. On the other hand, an image of anything (magnified or otherwise) is always about what happens when the object is irradiated by light. So what's the big deal? In this case we are looking at light emitted by an excited atom - a while back I took some very long exposure shots of faintly bioluminescing moth grubs for a research project in an otherwise entirely darkened room - the grubs, I believe, were actually dead and it was the bacteria feasting on them that were producing the light - of course I couldn't actually see the bacteria but they were certainly there and the light they emitted gave them away. Likewise with this image - of course we can't actually see the atom - but the light it emits in response to laser irradiation gives away its presence - and to a massively imprecise approximation - its location. Its all really a question of interpreting what you see intelligently - rather than taking exception to apparently misleading media headlines.
 

Unes

Active Member
Premium Member
OK - but my point was its not a hoax, just a case of over stating things in the media.
Okay, this is neither a hoax, nor the picture of an atom, because an atom is not that big!
This is the firework display of an energized atom.
 

Milton Platt

Well-Known Member

"A mind-bending image of a single strontium atom, held near motionless by electric fields, has won the overall prize
in a national science photography competition, organized by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC).

“In the center of the picture, a small bright dot is visible – a single positively-charged strontium atom. It is held nearly motionless by electric fields emanating from the metal electrodes surrounding it. […] When illuminated by a laser of the right blue-violet color, the atom absorbs and re-emits light particles sufficiently quickly for an ordinary camera to capture it in a long exposure photograph. [..] Laser-cooled atomic ions provide a pristine platform for exploring and harnessing the unique properties of quantum physics. They are used to construct extremely accurate clocks or, as in this research, as building blocks for future quantum computers, which could tackle problems that stymie even today’s largest supercomputers.”
source
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That's pretty neat. I would think that the atom is very much smaller and cannot be seen by the naked eye, it is just the light emitted that makes it appear to be large enough to be seen. Kind of like looking at a star on a clear night. if you could extinguish the light from it, it would be to small to see.
 
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