Boffins snap X-ray closeup of single atom – and by closeup we mean nanometres

Scientists in the US have managed to capture the first X-ray image of a single atom, and it only took 12 years of work developing a technique and a super-powered X-ray instrument to do it. Now, after a dozen years of work, the team of scientists from Ohio University, Argonne National Laboratory, the University of Illinois- …

[Neil Barnes]

If you wait long enough

everything will be iron anyway, right? So they'll all be the same and it won't matter which is which :)

[Zenubi]

Big News

No small achievement !

[Kevin McMurtrie]

Scientists think they know what they're going to use this for, but the uses they don't yet know of will be the exciting ones.

[razorfishsl]

The paper ill be keeping an eye out for..

Anal probing on a Nanometer scale..

[S4qFBxkFFg]

Yes, but what colour was it?

[Dr. G. Freeman]

Fe (II) is pale green, Fe (III) is orange-brown, from the look of the complex it's in could be either

[Julian Bradfield]

Perusing (i.e. keyword scanning, since it is *way* beyond my level) the paper, it's an Fe(II) ion.

[John Brown (no body)]

Wow!

"Going forward, the team plans to look into additional ways to apply the technology to areas like researching the gathering of critical materials and other atomic advancements."

That's pretty damned impressive. Such a shame it arrived a bit late for Theranos to use :-)