Wow. What looks like a boring shot of a bit of scientific equipment is actually a huge feat of scientific achievement. I’m genuinely blown away by this.

The flash was to illuminate the instruments. Then, leaving the shutter open longer was to collect the very faint emissions from the atom. And, no, it's not a big atom. A few hundred picometers across. But you can still see the light it emits, even if it is itself too small to see. Just as you can see a star that appears far too small to cover even a single pixel in a camera.

I didn’t say anything to the contrary. I just said it was a great image.

It's interesting that they chose to keep the photo so zoomed out. In this day and age they could have got so much closer. I think it was set up to be a click bait photo for an article like this.

It's a point light source - zooming in would not add any detail.

If I understand it well, you're not seeing the actual atom, but the light emitted by a single atom. Just like you won't be able to see a candle a mile away unless it's lit in a pitch black night.

I think you nailed it Bolkey and Marc Anderson. I think stars fall under the same idea. We see the light emitted (or re-emitted as the article says), not the star and its actual size.

I mean, except for the sun of course.

Well, actually all the light from the sun is being emitted.

Really, all a star is is a cloud of atoms that are so densely packed that they begin to fuse together, which emits photons. I would say that the light is part of the star, because if it's not emitting light, it's not a star.

It then becomes a black hole.

Actually stars emit light because they are hot (black body radiation). Fusion is the cause of this heating.

Yes and no. Nuclear reactions like fusion produce so much energy so quickly that much of that energy can only be released via light because the heat can literally not dissipate quickly enough, which is why stars don't exactly follow the predicted blackbody spectrum.

If they only emitted blackbody radiation, we wouldn't be able to use a states light to tell what elements are present and what fusion reactions are taking place.

I know the sun emits light, the exception I was referring to is that sun is that is physically big enough to see from earth, emitting or not.

Light is no longer part of the star, it it were, we could not give star locations, as their light is everywhere. The smoke when my car starts is not part of the car.

You are correct. Nothing to do with Heisenberg at all. A strontium ion is something like 300 pico meters across--way too small for even a 1:1 macro shot to resolve. Not even close. But that doesn't mean we can't see the light. It just means we can't resolve the atom. It's just like starlight. Stars are so far away from us that we can't see any detail. They are virtually perfect point sources for all intents and purposes. Yet they are easily visible to the eye or to a camera. In fact, if you include the effects of diffraction, stars will often cover multiple pixels in a photographic image despite being vastly too distant to cover even a single pixel.

Same for this strontium atom. It doesn't actually cover an entire pixel, but if enough light reflects off of it you will be able to record the light. You just need a bunch of photons. So, the flashes were used to illuminate the instrument, and a long exposure was used to collect the reflected laser light.

Well, you would not see a candle from one meter in absolute dark either so is it always about emiting or reflecting the light? :D

Uh... No. We do not only ever see light that is reflected. We can also see light emitted from it's source (like in Bolkey's analogy of a candle). Emitted light is not the same as reflected light. I don't know if you've ever seen an LED flashlight, but the LED is very small, but the light it produces can be seen from miles away. Same principal here.

Have you answered yur own question then ?

And no there was no Heisenberg uncertainty, which is to do with electrons, not atoms

Heisenberg uncertainty principle applies to everything, it's just that atoms have more mass than electrons so the effects are less important.

However the size of the atom in the photograph here is probably limited by pixel size, spherical aberrations in the lens, and possibly micro-motion in the ion trap.

Uncertainty principle applies to everything.

Are you sure? :-)

Applies to everything really small, Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle basically describes the impossibility of knowing every thing about a small particle (not the type of particle but the the individual particle being studied) due to the fact that the measuring of a certain property changes interferes with other measurements, the electron is a good example but not the only particle this applies to (if you doubt me, which you should, consult more reliable sources than a comment section, Wikipedia might be a good start).

webdiver: Are you replying to me or to Tonguc Oztek? I was trying to be facetious with a play on words. It probably would have been more obvious if I had written, "Are you certain?" instead of "Are you sure?". But in fact, Tonguc was correct if you add the qualifier "in motion". The uncertainty principle does apply to everything in motion, whether it's really small, small, large, or really large.

As others here have said the Uncertainty Principle applies to EVERYTHING. It applies to objects large or small, but for large everyday objects like a chair the degree of uncertainty is so small it is not important. It also applies to moving or stationary objects because to be sure an object is stationary we need to measure its motion (Dp.Dx>= h/4pi (changes in momentum, position). It applies to objects (we think are) fixed precisely in time (DE.Dt>= h/4pi) (changes in energy and uncertainty in time).

The great thing about the uncertainty principle is that it makes us think about how we 'know' things. ie in the physical world by receiving or bouncing photons off things. It can be applied, generally and without the equations, to social science investigation as well. We always change things a bit when we try to investigate them.

I don't really see what this has to do with meth? It's not even really blue either

I'm so honored to see your comments Mrs. Quchi.

Heisenberg... Wasn't he the high school science teacher who developed a criminal underground stemming from a new type of blue drug he created? I'm not certain, but I think so

I think the 2 flash units just lit the inside of the machine, the laser made the atom re-emit light (not reflected). So a long exposure for the atom ("lit" by the laser), with a quick flash to show the machine.

If you don't light up the machinery, the image (I imagine) would just be a dot in a black field, and not as interesting.

My thoughts too. The flashes are just to make the machine pop and add color.

Wow. I just learned more from reading these comments than I ever did in high school science. Lol

Y'all failed physics 101...

There's the resolution of the camera to be taken into account.
The sensor nodes are bigger than any single atom, so when activated by any light, no matter how small the source, It will be at least one pixel in size. Also, photons "travel" as wavefronts. Obviously the atom is continuously remitting energy as photons, and it takes multiple photons to excite the sensor, so they may excite neighboring sensor nodes.

Being it a long exposure photo, it's likely that the atom was moving or oscillating and we see the light traces it left around itself, not his real size

aha exactly. the scale is so off as to be literally comical. too early for april fools, so i am confused:)

Basically we (and camera sensors) see photons. Photons reflect off objects, and activate the photosensors which produce an image.
If you blast even a tiny atom with an incredibly strong light, in this case a high powered laser, you're bound to get enough photons to reflect back that you can form an image.

It will of course only be represented as a pixel, as the camera can't resolve it any smaller.

This isn't reflection, this is more likely fluorescense, as they mention it absorbs light and re-emits it, presumably at a longer wavelength.

Yep, same result though :)
Photons come from small thing one way or another, and lights up a pixel.

hmm. Thinking of it that way, I guess could be! If enough photons hit a single pixel, I suppose you are absolutely right, even if the atom was improbably smaller than the pixel, the pixel could register it as 'on'

The wavelength of this light is around 400nm. I didn't think that an atom is actually big enough to reflect this light, but college physics was a long time ago. But, I understand this to be an atom emitting light.

It's not reflection, the atom is excited, that's why he says that strontium absorbs and re emits light fast enough for it to be able to be recorded on camera, the amount of light beams emitted from it per unit of time is enough for for a camera to tell it is not noise.

Light is a wave when not observed, and a particle when observed. So we see light as a particle.

Uh no. Light can certainly exhibit wave-like properties when observed, but it's certainly not a particle. It is something that we have no reference for in our macro scale, but when we make wave-like observations, it gives us its wave-like properties. Similar for particle-properties. I liken it to describing a rhino in terms of a dragon (because it is scaly) and unicorn (because it has a horn). Of course it is neither of those, and unicorns and dragons don't exist. But if all you've ever read are dragons and unicorns, then you're forced to describe the rhino in those terms.

Of course light exhibits wave like properties, but only when you are NOT observing it. You cannot observe the light as a wave, but only as a particle. Observation means interacting with it as a particle.

Think of the double slit experiment. Light (or electrons) passes through the slits as a wave, but hits the screen as a particle. Light as a wave has a probability to be anywhere, but particle can only be in one place, and that's where you observe it.

(unless this: https://phys.org/news/2015-....
and watch this, it's a fun video: https://www.youtube.com/wat...

Nonsense. If light can only exhibit wave-like properties if you're not observing it, then how was it originally discovered to be a wave? Through observation. Light can be diffracted and refracted, and you can observe this. Ergo, wave. The double-slit experiment shows it as a wave, because the experiment is set-up to show it's wave-like properties. The detecting screen shows it as a particle because it filters out the wave-like properties at that point and gets it to exhibit its particle-like properties. I'll say it again, it is NOT a particle. It is neither a wave nor a particle; it is something else that exhibits properties of both when the experiment demands those properties.

I guess you are misunderstanding me and confused about the term "observation". I'm not saying light (or electrons) do not behave as waves. We are simply not observing it as a wave directly, that's all. In the double slit experiment, the interference pattern indicates that light must have behaved as a wave passing through the slits. We are not observing the wave, we are deducing that it behaved like a wave by observing it as a particle hitting the screen. Got it?

I'm using the scientific term for observation whereas you're using the colloquial. You said that it was a wave until it was observed and then it was a particle. So if I measure the electric field, magnetic field, and frequency/wavelength, then I am measuring the wave, DIRECTLY. Like I said, wave properties when you measure it as such, particle properties when you measure it as such

Exact opposite; I'm using the term observation from a scientific perspective. I'm more specifically referring to direct observation. Maybe you are mixing the terms observation and measurement. Yes you can experimentally determine the the wavelength of a wave, after the wave diffracts from a grating, by observing where the photons, the particles hit. You cannot observe the wave along its path to the screen.

You don't need a diffraction grating to measure that. You can literally measure the increase and decrease in electric and magnetic field.
My problem is when you said it was a wave when not observed, and a particle when it was. Do you actually still stand by that?

I do stand by that. However, I will gladly change my mind if you would show evidence against that. This is my understanding based on what I know, and I don't know everything. So please refer me to the experiment where the oscillation in the electric field is directly observed.