.josh Posted November 30, 2009 Share Posted November 30, 2009 you can't see air because it's invisible. Air is not invisible. why you got to go kill a joke with technicalities? You are such a buzzkill. That's the kind of stuff keeps you from getting laid. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
YourNameHere Posted December 1, 2009 Author Share Posted December 1, 2009 Sorry I suggested it. :-\ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nrg_alpha Posted December 1, 2009 Share Posted December 1, 2009 See what you went and did YourNameHere? An avalanche of invisibility/air/light discussions! No worries though.. it's not uncommon to see discussions take on bizarre turn around these neck of the woods. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
448191 Posted December 1, 2009 Share Posted December 1, 2009 why you got to go kill a joke with technicalities? You are such a buzzkill. That's the kind of stuff keeps you from getting laid. I only kill the really lame ones. Lame and inaccurate, double fail. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
448191 Posted December 1, 2009 Share Posted December 1, 2009 No such thing exists, so when talking about non-fictitious things it must be implicitly understood that there is a context. Therefore, when someone says "air is invisible" it's logical to assume the person means "to me". Natural languages cannot be correctly interpreted if everything is taken literally. I could get all philosophical and mention language cannot be interpreted correctly (the paradoxical evaluation of what is "interpreting correctly", "literal" and "implied"), but I won't Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fenway Posted December 1, 2009 Share Posted December 1, 2009 Not that any type of microscope powerful enough to view atoms even exists in the first place. The only way that we can actually generate images of atoms is through STMs, whose images aren't actually images of the atoms themselves but computer generated depictions based on data acquired. Given sufficient magnification you would be able to see anything regardless of size. Just because a piece of technology doesn't exist doesn't mean it cannot exist. Yes, of course, and I wasn't stating otherwise. I was just saying that at current we don't posses the the technology. Actually, there is a practical hard limit -- magnification requires a lens to bring the image into focus, and that lens has to be smooth, or the resulting image will be fuzzy. And you can't polish a lens to be infinitely smooth -- in fact, it's pratically impossible to focus x-rays at all, which have a wavelength on the order of magnitude of atomic resolution. In my other life, I did years of graduate training to work around this exact problem -- it's a royal pain in the butt. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel0 Posted December 1, 2009 Share Posted December 1, 2009 Atoms aren't infinitely small though. Try going back a couple of hundred years and try telling someone that in the future we'll have flying machines that can take us anywhere in the world in short amounts of time. Or try going back only 30 years and try telling someone that today, even children have computers, you can get some that only weigh a couple of kilograms but are still several orders of magnitudes more powerful than theirs and that 4 GB RAM is really cheap. That's not to say I think we'll have the technology soon, within my lifetime or even within a couple of hundred years. For all I know, someone might make an ingenious discovery in a couple of decades that changes life as we know it. The hard limit you're speaking of is the hard limit imposed by current technology and scientific theories. It's really difficult speaking about what we'll have in the future. If we knew that, it wouldn't belong in the future but today. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fenway Posted December 1, 2009 Share Posted December 1, 2009 "Focusing light" is not a current scientific theory -- it's not going anywhere. And yes, while polishing a mirror to 1 angstrom is a "technical limitation", it's almost not going anywhere. Like I said, it's a practical hard limit, not a theoretical one. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mchl Posted December 1, 2009 Share Posted December 1, 2009 You do realise, that even if we had a device able to produce magnification large enough to see atoms (or more exactly: atomic nuclei), there's still problem of keeping them still within a field of view? This might be less of problem with solids, but air... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel0 Posted December 1, 2009 Share Posted December 1, 2009 Couldn't you freeze them to around 0 Kelvin? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mchl Posted December 1, 2009 Share Posted December 1, 2009 Would that still be air? And besides, you could quite well see it with naked eye as well. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel0 Posted December 1, 2009 Share Posted December 1, 2009 Dunno. Does the molecular structure change when the molecules get colder? I thought they would just move less. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mchl Posted December 1, 2009 Share Posted December 1, 2009 It would soldify, and by 'air' I understand a mixture of _gases_ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alex Posted December 1, 2009 Share Posted December 1, 2009 Not that any type of microscope powerful enough to view atoms even exists in the first place. The only way that we can actually generate images of atoms is through STMs, whose images aren't actually images of the atoms themselves but computer generated depictions based on data acquired. Given sufficient magnification you would be able to see anything regardless of size. Just because a piece of technology doesn't exist doesn't mean it cannot exist. Yes, of course, and I wasn't stating otherwise. I was just saying that at current we don't posses the the technology. Actually, there is a practical hard limit -- magnification requires a lens to bring the image into focus, and that lens has to be smooth, or the resulting image will be fuzzy. And you can't polish a lens to be infinitely smooth -- in fact, it's pratically impossible to focus x-rays at all, which have a wavelength on the order of magnitude of atomic resolution. In my other life, I did years of graduate training to work around this exact problem -- it's a royal pain in the butt. I wasn't really agreeing with the fact that you can magnify an infinite amount, but rather that it would be possible to magnify enough to see atoms, eventually. I guess I should have made that clear. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mchl Posted December 1, 2009 Share Posted December 1, 2009 Diameter of nuclei of Uranium is estimated at 1.6 × 10^−15 m. Shortest wavelength human eye can see is in range of 3.8 × 10^-7m. There's no way you can see it in visible light, as the wavelength itself is millions time larger than nucleus itself. [edited] Duh... took wrong end of visible spectrum. Not much difference though. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
premiso Posted December 1, 2009 Share Posted December 1, 2009 It is all just one big conspiracy theory. I mean look at the movie "The Matrix" when Morpheus says..."Is that air you're breathing". And viola Air no longer existed for Neo. There is no spoon! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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