Seeing Atomic Bonds Before and After Reactions

Necroloth sends this quote from an article at Wired: "For the first time, scientists have visually captured a molecule at single-atom resolution in the act of rearranging its bonds. Until now, scientists were only able to infer molecular structures. Using atomic force microscopy (abstract), the individual atomic bonds that connect the carbon molecule's 26 carbon and 14 hydrogen atoms are clearly visible and look startlingly similar to the stick diagrams in chemistry textbooks."

not "visually captured"

[girlinatrainingbra]

Atomic Force Microscopy [wikipedia.org] does not visually capture anything. It measures atomic forces with a finer resolution that goes beyond the optical diffraction limit for wavelengths of light visible to the unaided eye.

The rendered images are derived from the force measurements and thus these really are "inferred images" or visual renderings of force measurements. These are definitely not "visual capture" images. These are visual renderings.