Notes from the Editors

摘要

Mineral collectors all know that their specimens consist of orderly arrangements of atoms in a crystal structure, but we generally have to take that on faith because we can't see the atoms directly. A team of scientists from the University of California, Los Angeles and Northwestern University has produced 3-D images at a resolution that shows individual atoms and structural defects in a tiny platinum crystal. For many years scientists have been able to produce only flat, two-dimensional images of the arrangement of atoms in a crystal.