[weinzierl]

I fully agree with your point, but I think the "picture of atoms" is not a good supporting argument. The IBM image[1] is nothing more than a visualization of measurements including a good measure of artistic license. It has not much to do with seeing in the usual sense.

[1] http://researcher.watson.ibm.com/researcher/files/us-flinte/...

[tbabb]

Every picture is a visualization of measurements.

[noobermin]

Worse, by his definition of "see", one might as well say no one has ever seen the wind.

[weinzierl]

I guess my original comment was just lost in translation.

In my first language I think most people would agree that seeing involves visible light and eyes. We say the blind can't see, because their eyes don't work. We say that we can't see in the dark, because there is not light.

Sometimes we use see in a metaphorical sense, like "the blind see with their fingers". No one would confuse the fact that blind people gather some information about their surroundings with the help of their fingers with the fact that blind people just can't see. It's not the same thing.

I could agree that one can say "seeing" in regard to an atom in a purely metaphorical sense or poetical sense but that was not my interpretation of the original statement.

Maybe in English it's just different?

[choosername]

I didn't ever think i'd seen the wind. It's not an idiom I'm familiar with, either.

[weinzierl]

Agreed, but looking at an artistic interpretation of an object is not seeing the original object.

You can take a picture of a car and you can see a car with your eyes. You can take measurements of an atom and visualise that measurements but you will never be able to see an atom.

To put it another way: Imagine you and me took a picture of a green car. In your picture the car is green, in mine the car turned out blue. Would you agree that your picture is more realistic than mine?

The color of the atoms in the IBM visualisation is purely artistic. You will never be able to say green atoms are more realistic than blue ones. I’d even go so far to say the same applies for radius and shape in the IBM visualisation.

“no one has ever seen an atom" and no one ever will, because atoms don't exist in the visual realm.

[gamesbrainiac]

This should be a quote.

[c22]

"Every picture is a visualization of measurements."

[thisrod]

People do take photographs of single atoms. It requires a very colorful atom and a very bright flash, but both those things exist. They're not particularly interesting photographs: atoms are smaller than a light wavelength and they look like dots. I've seen them before, although I couldn't find one in a minute of Googling. There are even movies, as described in this paper:

http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.36788

[weinzierl]

Abstract:

   We demonstrated interruptions of macroscopic duration in 
   a single trapped and cooled Ba+ ions’s 493‐nm 
   fluorescence. They are caused by transitions of the ion 
   into the ‘‘dark’’ 2D5/2 state.—Multiple simultaneous 
   jumps of three ions indicate cooperative interaction 
   with the light.

I haven't read the paper but I'd be interested in a quote from the part that supports the statement: "People do take photographs of single atoms. It requires a very colorful atom and a very bright flash,..."

I'm not aware of a definition of atomic color but maybe that's a real thing in analytical chemistry, spectroscopy or some other field. I wouldn't be surprised.

Probably it's just the wavelength of the emitted light.

[karmakaze]

I would say it's somewhere between these points. The IBM image[1] is a picture, constructed from tunnelling currents rather than light, much like a blind person can see a face with their hands. Since even in the usual sense we don't see the object but the interaction with it, I would classify them more similarly than not.