Wednesday, May 1, 2013

Since you're going to be seeing it everywhere else...

...it might as well be here, too. (h/t Stuart Cantrill and Gavin Armstrong)



A pretty amazing feat by the IBM team. A long time ago, I wrote:
...it is my unfounded speculation that the future of chemistry does not lie in the life sciences, but in the physical sciences. 
I think that's still true. 
at

13 comments:

  1. WavefunctionMay 1, 2013 at 10:07 AM

    Pretty amazing indeed; almost sends a shiver up your spine when you realize that humans (and only humans) can do something like this.

    My unfounded speculation is that the future of chemistry will lie in the information sciences.

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  2. AnonymousMay 1, 2013 at 10:13 AM

    picoputians?

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  3. AnonymousMay 1, 2013 at 10:15 AM

    ..I am losing my relevance as an organic chemist and that can't be good. First the big pharma jettisoned me off, the academy made me irrelevant and now the movie! CJ, is there anything left to be seen?

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  4. PolychemMay 1, 2013 at 10:30 AM

    Better than 1080P resolution!

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  5. The Aqueous LayerMay 1, 2013 at 12:36 PM

    You make me feel small.

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  6. AnonymousMay 1, 2013 at 4:52 PM

    After all our history of scientific achievement, it all comes back to cave drawings.

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  7. AnonymousMay 1, 2013 at 10:05 PM

    I showed this to my daughter. Her first question was "what kind of atoms are they?" Anyone know?

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    Replies
    1. ChemjobberMay 2, 2013 at 12:02 AM

      From the BBC article: "The stop-motion animation uses a few dozen carbon atoms, moved around with the tiny tip of what is called a scanning tunnelling microscope (STM)."

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    2. AnonymousMay 2, 2013 at 3:24 AM

      And the surface is copper (atoms night visualized)

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    3. AnonymousMay 2, 2013 at 3:25 AM

      *not ... not sure where my brain is today.

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    4. AnonymousMay 2, 2013 at 4:47 PM

      The surface is a Copper (111). The boy is 'drawn' from CO molecules.

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  8. uncle samMay 2, 2013 at 4:56 AM

    What are those wavy thingies around the atom? How come they don't interfere (two on the left) and interfere on the boy on the right in the still photo? Just some free electron hanging around the carbon?

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  9. AnonymousMay 8, 2013 at 6:26 PM

    OK folks, this is pretty much *exactly the same thing they did in 1990* when spelling "IBM" with atoms. They've just done it a bunch more times to generate a stop-motion thingy.

    On the broader point relevant for the Chemjobber audience, is there anything resembling novel and/or groundbreaking scientific research happening in the private sector anymore? Because we sure aren't seeing it here...

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looks like Blogger doesn't work with anonymous comments from Chrome browsers at the moment - works in Microsoft Edge, or from Chrome with a Blogger account - sorry! CJ 3/21/20