Thank you for the images which were quite fascinating. This may seem like a dumb question but shouldn't we be able to see some hint of the nickel atoms that the helium atoms were sitting on?
Jack Regner Trampedach wrote:
On the contrary, Jack. The scanning tunneling microscope was invented in 1987 and can easily resolve atoms. Have a look at: http://www.phys.au.dk/spm/ There is also a STM picture and movie-gallery in the left-hand-side of that page. Each bump in the pictures is an atom. We can tell which elementa particular atom is, and we can also remove and deposit single atoms usingthe same technology - first done in 1989 by D. Eigler from IBM:http://www.ieee-virtual-museum.org/collection/event.php?id=3457012&lid=1 <http://www.ieee-virtual-museum.org/collection/event.php?id=3457012&lid=1> I have seen the scanning tunneling microscope in action. It drifted markedlywhen I entered the room, because my body-temperature heated the roomand the microscope, resulting in an expansion of the microscope. I also snapped my fingers, and the sound, traveling through the air and the many stages of suspension designed to isolate it from shaking - resulted in a deep furrow in thepicture.
