Have you ever tried those magical pieces of software that merge multiple pictures of an object from different angles to produce a 3D model of it?
Good. Now think about upgrading your equipment, because those guys at UCLA do the same with atoms. Seriously.
Using a scanning transmission electron microscope at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s Molecular Foundry, Miao and his colleagues analyzed a small piece of tungsten, an element used in incandescent light bulbs. As the sample was tilted 62 times, the researchers were able to slowly assemble a 3-D model of 3,769 atoms in the tip of the tungsten sample.
Here’s the final result
![The 3-D coordinates of thousands of individual atoms and a point defect in a material were determined with a precision of 19 trillionths of a meter, where the crystallinity of the material is not assumed. The figure shows the measured 3-D atomic positions of a tungsten tip, consisting of nine atomic layers, labelled with crimson (dark red), red, orange, yellow, green, cyan, blue, magenta and purple from layers one (top) to nine (bottom), respectively.](https://sparagino.it/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Jianwei-John-Miao-atoms-image-2015-1024x520.jpg)
Original article here.