Mark Iverson quoted:
"The researchers used a custom-built microscope with an iron-coated tip to manipulate cobalt atoms on a plate of manganese. Through scanning tunneling microscopy, the team repositioned individual cobalt atoms on a surface that changed the direction of the electrons' spin. . . .
Rick Monteverde recently reported a breakthrough in "vector vortex coronagraph breakthrough on exoplanet observations."
When I was a kid, I remember reading that scientists would never be able to see individual atoms with a microscopy, and that it would take a gigantic telescope, kilometers wide, to see individual planets circling remote stars. I think the book said we might someday send interstellar rocket probes that would send back images of planets.
Years ago someone proposed gigantic orbital telescopes of spinning mercury. They would be suspended in solar orbit, buoyed up by solar wind, to give them a little gravity. It turns out you do not need such a tour de force to see exoplanets; software can do the trick.
In the short story "The Last Question" Asimov had a gigantic computer, Multivac, solving the energy crisis in 2061, by tapping solar energy of the sun with "a small station, one mile in diameter, circling the Earth at half the distance of the Moon." (One mile does not seem large enough, even in space, and why would it be orbiting 192,000 km away?)
Needless to say, everyone thought we would never achieve controlled nuclear fusion without gigantic, expensive instruments such as Tokamaks.
Things often turn out to be easier than we predict. - Jed
