[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.