A tip one atom wide? So what? I just made one with a tip 1/2 atom wide. That makes my prick sharper than your prick. So there.

being 1 atom BIG wouldnt the tip break on impact anyway.

With a 1 atom tip, aren't chances pretty good that you'll miss and shove the tip between two atoms in your enemy's body?

Yes, but is it as sharp as the Subtle Knife?

The image is obviously fake, for starters only Scanning Electron Microscopes can see atoms at this resolution, and they generate black and white images, they are not yet capable of color images and won't be for a very long time, and secondly if the images were real this wouldn't be tungsten but some very poorly made metal, this thing looks more like ductile grey cast iron with a lot of impurities to me.

ok einstein. but why would we need this? also Wandel, the way you cut things is by stabbing between the atoms

Would probably be a huge hit in prison..itd be alot easier to shove up your rectum than a sharpened spork :]

OK "rectum shoving" aside (some people know too much about just wrong things) , would you even feel the needle at first?

Extinguishing the Plasmafire...

>only Scanning Electron Microscopes

This image is from a Field Ionization Microscope, the first such device (introduced in 1951) able to achieve atomic resolution.

>and they generate black and white images

Like astronomical radio imagery, microscopy images are sometimes "colorized" (on purpose or by process) better emphasizing various structures.

>if the images were real this wouldn't be tungsten.

The needle-like tip of a FIM is by function made of tungsten or a tungsten-carbon alloy.

Wow.. MichaelS is on the knowledge train for sure.

We're sure this is resolved to atomic level and not molecular level? Cause if it is atomic level, then what are the nonspherical variations on the surface?

wohho,

The small round features are individual atoms. The lighter colored elongated features are traces captured as atoms moved during the imaging process.

>Cause if it is atomic level, then what are the non-spherical
>variations on the surface?

According to the AIP information after the link;

"The lighter colored elongated features are traces captured as atoms moved during the [1 second] imaging process."

I also read that on the website a couple days ago and am still skepticle. if the atoms are moving, then it's not a stable structure, some type of exchange must be taking place in order to force those atoms to move.

I'm slightly mind boggled at the prospect of looking at atoms, even if they are relatively large at 74 electrons.

although I apparently can't spell skeptical

needles this tiny & sharp will be very useful for biological research, if it can be made hollow to allow minimal disruption of cell membranes for replacing or adding to nuclei. currently they use glass needles or some such that gouge huge (relatively) holes in the side of cells.

If cellular injection was the app, the end unit would likely need to be many times this size because most medications are long strings of molecules that wouldn't fit through a 1 tungsten atom sized hole. and if it did, the flow rate for the med would be obscenely slow.

Now if we're talking genetic manipulation, perhaps. if you're injecting some type of modifier into the mitochondria, or the DNA itself, this scale might be necessary.

Talking about this subject 60 years ago would have gotten you a trip to the loony bin. Amazing quickly we have become Gods in medicine.

too much Bill Nye for a Monday.... (getting dizzy)

imagine trying to find this needle in a haystack....