7 ms·

Maybe I'm being pedantic, but I'm not sure if I would call this a photograph

• confutio 12y ago
  The same argument could be used for any photographs of far off galactic masses which are made by taking light not visible to the human eye and converting it into an image, which are usually accepted as accurate representations.
  • cozzyd 12y ago
    They still use photons... and nearly all cameras are sensitive to frequencies outside visible spectrum.
• gus_massa 12y ago
  I agree. I think this is a more complex experiment, not a "photography". I'm not a classification fanatic; I can classify electron microscopy as "photography", but this is too diferent.
  • deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  • jschwartzi 12y ago
    They do have some pretty neat pictures of the surface of a sample nanowire outlined by what they think are SPPs, but calling it a "first ever photo of a photon as both a wave and a particle" seems like it's stretching things a bit. From what I understand, they're basically shooting an IR and UV laser pulse separated by a short(femptosecond) delay at the surface of a nanowire, and then using the interaction between a beam of electrons passing near the surface of the wire to gauge surface excitation as a result of the laser pulses. In theory, the surface electrons enter an excitation state from the laser pulse and then shortly thereafter exchange their quanta with the electron beam. Because light is quantized, the excitation state is reached, but because it is a field with wave-like characteristics the excitation states in the surface electrons appear to exhibit a standing-wave pattern. This is pretty fantastic.