To make the breakthrough, a team of physicists at IBM Research Zurich in Switzerland and the University of Liverpool in the United Kingdom used a device called a scanning tunneling microscope (STM).
Scientific research has long been a solitary endeavour—one researcher, one microscope.
科学研究长期以来都是一项孤独的行为——研究者和一架显微镜。
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Meanwhile, a worldwide network of environmental sensors monitors the planet in real time. And research satellites observe it from above, as if the earth were under a microscope.