An anonymous reader quotes a report from Scientific American: Behold the highest-resolution image of atoms ever seen. Cornell University researchers captured a sample from a crystal in three dimensions and magnified it 100 million times, doubling the resolution that earned the same scientists a Guinness World Record in 2018. Their work could help develop materials for designing more powerful and efficient phones, computers and other electronics, as well as longer-lasting batteries. The researchers obtained the image using a technique called electron ptychography. It involves shooting a beam of electrons, about a billion of them per second, at a target material. The beam moves infinitesimally as the electrons are fired, so they hit the sample from slightly different angles each time -- sometimes they pass through cleanly, and other times they hit atoms and bounce around inside the sample on their way out. Cornell physicist David Muller, whose team conducted the recent study, likens the technique to playing dodgeball against opponents who are standing in the dark. The dodgeballs are electrons, and the targets are individual atoms. Though Muller cannot see the targets, he can see where the "dodgeballs" end up, thanks to advanced detectors. Based on the speckle pattern generated by billions of electrons, machine-learning algorithms can calculate where the atoms were in the sample and what their shapes might be. Previously, electron ptychography had only been used to image extremely flat samples: those merely one to a few atoms thick. The new study, published in Science, now allows it to capture multiple layers tens to hundreds of atoms thick. That makes the technique much more relevant to materials scientists, who typically study the properties of samples with a thickness of about 30 to 50 nanometers. (That range is smaller than the length your fingernails grow in a minute but many times thicker than what electron ptychography could image in the past.) "They can actually look at stacks of atoms now, so it's amazing," says Andrew Maiden, an engineer at the University of Sheffield in England, who helped develop ptychography but was not involved with the new study. "The resolution is just staggering."

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The most severe heat wave in the history of the Pacific Northwest is nearing its climax. The National Weather Service had predicted it would be "historic, dangerous, prolonged and unprecedented," and it is living up to its billing as it rewrites the record books. From a report: On Sunday, Portland, Ore., soared to its highest temperature in more than 80 years of record-keeping: 112 degrees. This new mark occurred just one day after hitting 108, which had broken the previous all-time record of 107. Seattle surged to 104 degrees Sunday, surpassing the old record of 103. The extraordinary heat swelled north of the international border as Canada saw its highest temperature recorded Sunday afternoon, when Lytton in British Columbia surged to 116 degrees. For perspective, that is just 1 degree from the all-time record in Las Vegas. While temperatures may have peaked Sunday afternoon in a few places, many were expected to turn even hotter on Monday or Tuesday, breaking all-time records (a number of which were initially broken Saturday and/or Sunday).

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