Does that mean photons are smaller than atoms since we can now “photograph” atoms... or is this some new science to take pictures of atoms? Someone explain to us who have been out of the science loop for years.
I assume you’re talking about the wave amplitude, and not the size of the photon itself? (the photon has no size, per se). A lower amplitude will result in a finer image, and that can be done by lowering the intensity, or number of photons, as unintuitive as that sounds. It has something to do with the wave function. The amplitude gets lower as the square root of the intensity, so it’s unproportional. You have to lower the intensity a lot to get only a slight reduction in amplitude, in other words. That’s probably why it took 20 hours to image the molocule, even though it was at very close range, according to the article.
This is not optical magnification wherein light is passed through lens to enlarge an image but rather a probe is brought very close, only a few nanometers, to the specimen, which had to be cooled to slow down it’s movements.
Then an electrical current is applied to probe and specimen and the probe can “feel” the shape of the individual atom’s electron “cloud”.
A computer then turns that information into an image. I think that I’ve described the process roughly. If anyone can help correct me, please do so.