Seems unlikely that you could record the shadow of just one atom — but you can, appar­ently, if you use the right fre­quency of light. Get it wrong by one part in a bil­lion, though, and the shadow van­ishes. This isn’t just a curi­os­ity — this sort of study should help determ­ine the optimum con­di­tions for micro­scopy, so you can use as much light as pos­sible to observe cel­lu­lar pro­cesses without des­troy­ing the cell. Read more here.

Here are some great images that have been produced using atomic force microscopy (AFM). They are detailed images that actually show bonds, and you can see the small variations in bond length. Amazing! Read more…