They say it’s a picture of atoms, but what are the atoms: the glowing yellow balls or the entire meatball including the darker red? If it’s the meatballs, then why do some have apparently two nuclei?
Here’s the public press release: https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2021/05/cornell-researchers-see-atoms-record-resolution
Here’s the actual scientific article: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abg2533
To put it in English, each blob is an atom, the thing as a whole is a crystal lattice of praseodymium orthoscandate (PrScO3).
In the article, figure 1d and 1e annotate the image to tell you exactly which part is which. The bright pairs are Pr-Pr, the single bright blobs with wings are O-Sc-O, and the dimmer blobs standing alone are O.
By my count that means each repeating section has two Pr, one Sc, and four O, which doesn’t add up to me, given the chemical formula PrScO3. But maybe that’s because they’re arranged in three dimensions and we’re only looking at two. I haven’t read the full article.
Thank you for that