What is the Smallest Object Ever Seen with a Microscope?

[Flatland]

What is the most powerful microscope in the world? And when I say microscope, I mean a microscope that can produce an actual image, nothing like the atom tip microscope or whatever. What is the smallest object anyone has ever seen? In other words, I want to see a REAL image of whatever is the smallest crap any scientist has ever seen with their eyes.

 

[Gokul43201]

In other words, you don't think an image produced say, by electrons is a REAL image ?

Well, then you are limited by the resolution offered by visible light, ~ 1 micron...unless you will accept NSOM as REAL. This can be achieved by most any high resolution optical microscope.

No scientist, however, will call these the most powerful microscopes in the world.

 

[Flatland]

uhh where did I say images produced by electrons aren't real? In fact that's precisely what I mean. Why the hell do people always think light when you say microscope? Whether it's photons, electrons, quarks or whatever particle you decide to use my question still stands. What is the smallest image ever seen that still constitute in a classical sense of "seeing." Why is this question so hard to understand?

 

[Pengwuino]

In other words, I want to see a REAL image of whatever is the smallest crap any scientist has ever seen with their eyes.

there...

 

[Flatland]

what?

 

[Flatland]

wow you people really don't understand my question. and I thought this was suppost to be science forum

::sigh::

 

[Pengwuino]

Your question is poorly worded, Gokul gave you as good of an answer as one could expect

 

[Flatland]

no it wasn't. my question is: what is the smallest object one can possibly see. I didn't ask anything about light or electrons. So let me say it again, what is the smallest object anyone has ever seen? Can it get any more direct than that?

 

[Pengwuino]

We've seen individual atoms. I've heard its doubtful we can even isolate quarks, let alone see them.

 

[Flatland]

We have? Can you post a picture? Last I heard, QM doesn't allow you to actually see an atom

 

[Pengwuino]

Well that's where it gets kind of weird. What do we mean when we say "see" an atom.

http://pubs.acs.org/cen/images/8109/8109stadium_corral.JPG

For example, this famous corral that IBM made... does it really count as "seeing"?

 

[Flatland]

when I say see, I mean being able to see physical features (whether it's with photons, or electrons or anything else for that matter) Look at the image bellow of a red blood cell. It was produced by an electron microscope

http://www.pbrc.hawaii.edu/microangela/rbc.htm

What is the smallest object ever seen that's still analgous to that picture in terms of "seeing"?

 

[Pengwuino]

Well the thing is, I am wondering if those pictures are true color. I do remember someone telling me once that electron microscope pictures are colored by the operators and don't represent true colors.

 

[Flatland]

Yes, electron microscope see in black and white. The color is digitally added. But that doesn't mean the image is fake. That picture above of the red blood cell is REAL in every sense of the word.

 

[Pengwuino]

Yes, electron microscope see in black and white. The color is digitally added. But that doesn't mean the image is fake. That picture above of the red blood cell is REAL in every sense of the word.

Well then if that's the criteria we're using, atoms are the smallest thing we've been able to see.

 

[Flatland]

Really? So we've been able to see physical features of an atom? Like the electron cloud and stuff? What does it actually look like? Pictures is really what I want

 

[Flatland]

Okay, I just did some research on google and it says that the smallest actual image ever taken is a single strand of DNA, with an electron microscope. Anyone can provide any images of what a strand of DNA actually looks like under an electron microscope?

 

[chroot]

Flatland, you appear to be missing the point. Below some limit, the concept of "seeing," that is, bouncing particles off an object and measuring their reflections, is no longer meaningful.

You can't, for example, "see" or "make a picture" of the electrons surrounding a nucleus, because you would need to using gamma radiation (very small wavelength light) to even hope to resolve an individual electron -- yet those gamma photons have enormous energy and totally disrupt and break apart the atom as you're trying to observe it.

- Warren

 

[Flatland]

But what is the smallest object that can be seen where seeing is still meaningful? And that is regardless of what microscope you use. That was my original question.

 

[chroot]

There isn't a hard limit at which the concept of seeing becomes meaningless. It's a slow slide into oblivion. That's why no one can pinpoint one specific image as the "smallest ever."

- Warren

 

[heartless]

How are we supossed to know the smallest picture taken under the microscope. If there's really something most powerful, then at least several pictures would be produced, making the smallest not quite smallest.

The smallest dimensions may have about tens of nanometers.

Here you have one of the smallest pictures:
http://www.trnmag.com/Photos/111500/Tiny_Metal_Wires_Image_111500.html

Some infos, http://www.nanooze.org/cnf11_article5.html

Here you have some pretty small pictures taken, (not the smallest however.)

http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/micro/gallery.html
http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/creatures/pages/concorde.html

 

[Pengwuino]

I still don't see how any of this beats out things like the corral

 

[Loren Booda]

The "smallest" object observable (in terms of action h) is an individual quantum.

 

[Flatland]

The "smallest" object observable (in terms of action h) is an individual quantum.

that's not my question. observing and seeing is not the same thing.

 

[Rach3]

I don't think anyone here understands what you mean by "seeing", you'll need to be clearer than that.

Meanwhile, here's some photos; two ions of Barium in a linear trap, cooled to microkelvins. I believe they got this photo by pointing a laser at the ions, and imaging the fluorescence with CCDs.

http://www.almaden.ibm.com/st/quantum_information/qcom/ion/

Here's an image of a single atom of Xenon on a surface of Nickel. This was taken with a Scanning Tunneling Microscope (STM), which basically involves dragging an extremely sharp tip over a conductive metal surface and measuring the electrical current due to quantum tunneling, as a voltage potential is applied (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scanning_tunneling_microscope" ). You can see the regular lattice structure of the surface Nickel atoms! They're much smaller than the Xenon atom.

http://www.almaden.ibm.com/vis/stm/images/stm1.jpg

http://www.almaden.ibm.com/vis/stm/gallery.html"
(From IBM's http://www.almaden.ibm.com/st/".)

More pictures from http://iontrap.physics.lsa.umich.edu/ .
Including: http://iontrap.physics.lsa.umich.edu/research/trap/index.html of micron-scale ion traps, used for quantum computation.

All of these are obviously false-color, as the resolution is much smaller than an optical wavelength. In the barium ions, they're detecting single (monochromatic) photons; the color represents the intensity of the fluorescence. With the STM's, they're measuring electron density. They're both images in the traditional sense, they show the spatial orientiation of things. At smaller scales this is impossible, the measurement would be too disruptive (i.e., at gamma-ray scales).

 

[Rach3]

uhh where did I say images produced by electrons aren't real? In fact that's precisely what I mean.
...
What is the smallest image ever seen that still constitute in a classical sense of "seeing." Why is this question so hard to understand?

The "classical" sense of seeing is directly observing visible light with the eye, perhaps through a lens.

 

[Loren Booda]

Have any of you seen in the dark a scintillation of what might be an individual particle?

 

[Astronuc]

Really? So we've been able to see physical features of an atom? Like the electron cloud and stuff? What does it actually look like? Pictures is really what I want

It is impossible to 'see' the 'physical features' of an atom because that requires very tiny particle with wavelengths smaller than those features. Neutrinos would be ideal if the interacted much more readily with matter. But then the physics of the universe would be very different.

The light we see is simply light that is scattered off atoms of the object we are seeing. Similarly, the image one sees from electron microscopy is due to the electrons iteracting with the object being observed and then forming an image on a CCD or screen.

IBM has mapped the surface of materials and formed an image of atoms, but they simply look like blobs.

As others have indicated there is a limit below which 'visible' or 'seeing' becomes meaningless.

 

[Gokul43201]

Scientists have imaged electron orbitals within atoms.

http://www.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca/highlights/2005/0501electronimaging_e.html[/URL]

[url]http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v432/n7019/abs/nature03183.html[/url]

But from what you said in the OP, I imagine you don't consider these REAL images !

 

[Rade]

Image of Co atom at this link:
http://physics.nist.gov/Divisions/Div841/Gp3/Projects/STM/atom_dynamics.html

 

[Domnu]

From quantum mechanics, you can't really "see" an electron cloud... particularly, not all parts of the cloud are really even occupied... the cloud just represents the probability density of an electron actually being there.

 

[SnailTrail]

http://www.insidescience.org/research/first_detailed_photos_of_atoms

here is the closest thing to what you are looking for that I could find...

 

[dwainegibson]

Just registered in order to call Flatland a berk. And also to post the truth on the matter.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2010-05/uoc--uru050310.php

 

[Borek]

This is not better result than IBM single atoms mentioned earlier. Well - it is new in terms of them being able to picture organic matter, I think IBM worked on metal surfaces, but the resolution sounds to be about the same.

 

[Ignorant]

Hi there,

It looks like that nobody before IBM or those guys at UCLA has ever seen how an atom looks like :)

Does it mean that obtaining real images of atoms is quite a recent achievement?