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posted by martyb on Tuesday February 13 2018, @09:41AM   Printer-friendly
from the brilliant! dept.

Picture of a Single Atom Wins Science Photo Contest

A remarkable photo of a single atom trapped by electric fields has just been awarded the top prize in a well-known science photography competition. The photo is titled "Single Atom in an Ion Trap" and was shot by David Nadlinger of the University of Oxford.

The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) in the UK today announced the winning photos of its national science photography competition. Nadlinger's grand prize photo shows an atom as a speck of light between two metal electrodes placed about 2mm (0.078in) apart.

From EPSRC:

When illuminated by a laser of the right blue-violet colour the atom absorbs and re-emits light particles sufficiently quickly for an ordinary camera to capture it in a long exposure photograph. The winning picture was taken through a window of the ultra-high vacuum chamber that houses the ion trap.


Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 13 2018, @01:16PM (8 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 13 2018, @01:16PM (#637089)

    It would be nice if they are going to brag about something like this if they can actually provide a resolution that shows said dot with sufficient detail to prove that you are seeing the atom and not simply light triggered/reflected by the existence of the atom at that point in space.

    Very anticlimatic photo.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 13 2018, @01:21PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 13 2018, @01:21PM (#637092)

    As someone said in the comments on the article, all we ever see is the light that's reflected.

    • (Score: 3, Informative) by c0lo on Tuesday February 13 2018, @01:31PM (1 child)

      by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday February 13 2018, @01:31PM (#637095) Journal

      all we ever see is the light that's reflected fullstop.

      FTFY - you see the photons originated from the Sun or from a lightbulb without a mirror, don't you? (just don't look with your remaining eye in a laser)

      Some say that hallucinogenics may cause one to see sounds, so the above may need further correction under such circumstances.

      --
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
      • (Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday February 13 2018, @03:14PM

        by FatPhil (863) <pc-soylentNO@SPAMasdf.fi> on Tuesday February 13 2018, @03:14PM (#637128) Homepage
        Synaesthesia definitely exists. I've never seen sounds, but I have heard light patterns (that I was creating myself with the aid of a 50 Hz polychromatic source and 2 near-periodic light filters. (OK, a TV showing snooker, and my 2 hands. Oh, and some rather spacey cookies.)
        --
        Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Tuesday February 13 2018, @01:33PM (4 children)

    by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday February 13 2018, @01:33PM (#637096)

    the atom

    About that "the" how do they know its singular?

    There are some trap designs where you can apply a force adjust a field and see how things move but this thing isn't that kind of trap, is it? So ... run the experiment 500x at a particle density where you should only trap an atom 50% of the time, and you trap something 250x so it "must" be one atom? Or are they playing some game where its so tight gradient that only one atom can realistically fit? I found one article from the 90s where I only have access to the abstract but apparently the exact peaks of the fluorescence spectra depends both theoretically and practically on the number of atoms in the trap, at least for very small numbers of atoms in the trap, which was interesting and maybe how these guys did it.

    • (Score: 5, Interesting) by VLM on Tuesday February 13 2018, @01:37PM (3 children)

      by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday February 13 2018, @01:37PM (#637097)

      $@^ it, about five seconds after I click submit, I figured it out. Absolute brightness. Likely 3x atoms would result in 3x photons and astronomers are pretty good at telling 3dB brightness apart. So if the dude's photo was analyzed to contain 2x predicted photons that would imply two atoms.

      Still, pretty cool. He must trust the constant illumination of whatever was exciting that one atom because if that fluctuated it would look like a # of atoms signal.

      • (Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday February 13 2018, @01:39PM (1 child)

        by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday February 13 2018, @01:39PM (#637098)

        3x photons and astronomers are pretty good at telling 3dB brightness apart.

        Sheeeeeeeit, posting without caffeine today was brave but stupid

        • (Score: 2) by insanumingenium on Tuesday February 13 2018, @06:45PM

          by insanumingenium (4824) on Tuesday February 13 2018, @06:45PM (#637221) Journal

          And here I was trying to give you the benefit of the doubt that perhaps you were saying that a second atom would be 3dB more. I would say we could all use 3+dB more caffeine.

      • (Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Tuesday February 13 2018, @04:09PM

        by Grishnakh (2831) on Tuesday February 13 2018, @04:09PM (#637172)

        $@^ it, about five seconds after I click submit, I figured it out.

        Yep, this is precisely why I keep clamoring for an "edit" function on this site, even if it's only available for 60 seconds after you post.