Science geeks all over the web are talking about the story on New Scientist.com about atomic force photography. Researchers at IBM have taken the first ever photos of an object at its molecular level. The image above shows an organic compound called pentacene and its five benzene rings (ugh, I just had a painful flashback to the organic chemistry section from high school).
Pentacene is pretty cool in and of itself; it’s used along with our old friend buckminsterfullerene (“Buckyballs”) to make organic photovoltaic devices, and turns up in things like the ultra-thin plastic OLED video display Sony showed off at CES this year. (link goes to YouTube video). But that’s another topic entirely.
Being able to photograph molecules and atoms at the level of resolution IBM has achieved will someday pay off in terms of being able to arrange individual molecules into microscopic computing devices that could make almost any object “smart”.
Dear Harvey, Pete, Barry, Kevin, and every other weathermonkey on Boston-area TV: Enough is enough. The fucking blizzard was THIRTY-TWO YEARS AGO. It’s time to stop trotting out the same blurry videotape of cars stuck on Rt. 128 that is older than some of the people who are actually on your broadcast, just so we [...]
It’s going to be a long two months waiting for the iPad to actually ship so that all the tech bloggers and their hangers-on will stop writing so much speculative bullshit about iT and turn their attention iNstead to some other thing that’s going to Change Life As We Know iT. Since you cannot click [...]
Please, please, PUH-LEEZE stop talking about “What do we call the last decade?” Nobody could come up with an acceptable choice ten years ago, and nobody’s going to come up with one now. “Aughties” and “Naughties” are contrived and stupid, and so is the very idea that anything wraps up all nice and neatly into [...]
