At first glance, this may seem to be a rather unassuming image.  A neutral gray background disrupted by a patterned spattering of white lines, which themselves are broken up by a couple of dark spherical shapes.  To understand the significance of this image one must really ‘look’ at it and do a little bit of reading.  Contrary to our initial reactions, this image is truly remarkable.

The picture above is an actual photo of the atomic bonds of a pentacene molecule.  Yes you read that right, the atomic bonds.  The molecule above is a whopping 1.4 nanometers long.  For those of you who have not taken a chemistry class in the recent past, one meter is equal to 1 billion nanometers.  When you begin to consider how incredibly small that molecule is, it becomes exceptionally easy to appreciate what a landmark image this really is.  It’s no wonder that it took the mad scientists at IBM 20 hours to capture this single image.  What’s more is that they had to ensure that the molecule stay perfectly still during the exposure.

For the full article head on over to Gizmodo.

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