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24-hour race won by molecule that traveled 1 micron

128 points| ordu | 3 years ago |arstechnica.com

22 comments

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[+] jxf|3 years ago|reply
To put this in perspective, a car going highway speeds of 60 mi/h that travels for 24 hours will travel 1,440 miles, or approximately 500,000 times the car's length.

By contrast, this molecule is 3 nm long and traveled 1 micron in 24 hours, or approximately 300 times the molecule's length -- that is, about four orders of magnitude slower than the car given its length.

[+] nine_k|3 years ago|reply
By this metric, something like a bee is faster than a jet fighter.

A bee: 0.02m, 5 m/s -> 250 self lengths. A fighter: 20m, 500 m/s -> 25 self lengths.

[+] xg15|3 years ago|reply
> The cars, present at the respective facilities of the eight participating teams, were remotely controlled from the race venue in Toulouse.

> Along with its unique vehicles, what made the race special was the venue, a giant spherical structure called La Boule. Located in the CEMES (Centre d’Élaboration de Matériaux et d’Etudes Structurales) campus, it has a diameter of 25 meters and housed the world’s largest electron microscope at the beginning of the 1960s.

So just to get it right, the "venue" is just the place where the races are coordinated, but otherwise was only chosen for symbolic/historic significance. The actual physical races are taking place in the labs of the participating teams. Is that correct?

So each team has its own "race track", tunneling microscope, etc as well?

[+] ck2|3 years ago|reply
"No fair! You changed the outcome by measuring it!"

(can't believe that awesome show is coming back, hope just as good)

[+] midasuni|3 years ago|reply
It’s had 4 finales and 3 revivals, all of which have brought great new episodes.

I’m confident the same will happen again.

[+] kalimanzaro|3 years ago|reply
That looks like a giant van der Graaff in the background. Powers the microscope or just the optics?
[+] COGlory|3 years ago|reply
I am an electron microscopist and I am thoroughly confused by what I am looking at. The article simply labels it as "the worlds largest electron microscope" which is confusing because size is not really a measure of electron microscopy as far as I'm aware. Perhaps voltage or resolution? The contest took place at NIMS which is well known for EM but I've never seen any photos like that one:

https://www.nims.go.jp/eng/research/group/electron-microscop...

Anyways, if that's a TEM my guess is the contraption at the top is more about the source (providing high voltage to the emitter) than the optics. Optics don't require much power, a single electron is not difficult to manipulate at all. What's harder is getting a coherent electron beam at the voltage you need (i.e. 300 kV+).

[+] tullatulla|3 years ago|reply
Those have nothing to do with the microscope.

A STM is basically a very sharp needle flying just above the surface and measuring the tunneling current with a few volts applied at most. It's rather small, most space will be taken up by the vacuum chamber and cryostat.

Other electron microscopes (TEM or SEM) cannot resolve molecules / or would fry them with their high voltage/currents...