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Electron Filmed for First Time

livescience.com — Scientists have filmed an electron in motion for the first time, using a new technique that will allow researchers to study the tiny particle's movements directly.

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  • quantumdot, on 02/26/2008, -50/+9Omg! This has huge ramifications... Going to read main article
    • goatfucker, on 02/26/2008, -34/+2You've been *****.
    • FTLJohnson, on 02/26/2008, -16/+9ugh... bamafun is getting articles on the front page now...?

      I remember friending bamafun a while back... and then unfriending (her?) afterwards because (she?) quickly unfriended me back because (she?) was just collecting fans... and is a spammer... (I'm not a FAN on digg of many people at all - I'm a friend - or not at all)

      Ugh. Well... at least THIS article is quite good.
      • robbh66, on 02/26/2008, -2/+29Course this could all be fixed by going back to before the whole idea of "friends" on digg came up.

        Digg used to be great. Now it's some sort of "game" for people to see who can get the most ***** to the FP or who can get the most traffic to their site that absolutely doesn't deserve it. Occassionally the story pops up that should be there, got there without having 234232 friends, and is actually a good article, but that's rare these days.
        Friends on digg... They were a bad idea then. They're a bad idea now. They need to go. Period.
        • ManicA, on 02/26/2008, -10/+4Guess who has no friends...
          • subliminalurge, on 02/26/2008, -0/+7I have friends in real life. I could give a ***** about how many "digg friends" I have.

            Maybe it's just because I don't establish my self worth based on how many hits I can draw to some lame ass blog. Maybe it's because I realize that I've already accomplished far greater things in my life that getting a story to the front page of digg. Maybe it's because I realize that being "successful" or "popular" on digg counts for exactly jack ***** in the real world.

            Truth is, nobody with a life gives a ***** about collecting "digg friends".
          • robbh66, on 02/26/2008, -0/+4Because I think it's stupid here and don't even bother with it?

            BTW- i have 10x as many "fans" as you.
          • FTLJohnson, on 02/28/2008, -0/+1Wow Rob, for all that ***** about friends, and the friends system and then bragging about having 10x as many fans as someone... i'm a little shocked... Out of the 300 mutual "friends" I have on digg... Literally less than 10 of them are people I friended first. The only people I am a "fan" of are Alex and Kevin... and then then other people I added are close personal offline friends. Everyone else was a 'fan' of mine. I chose to make it mutual. Unlike Bamafan, I didn't go around ***** befriending people hoping they'd friend me back.. The people who have 'friended' me have all been legitimate fans. I chose to befriend them back and take a look at what they are doing on digg... becuase that's just who I am. My whole comment was about how gaming the system sucks, and you chose to COOPT that sentiment... good job. You're kind of an ass though, I can see why social networking aspects of a website don't appeal to you.
        • wedgemartin, on 02/26/2008, -5/+4Rob can I be your friend
        • TheTaoOfBill, on 02/26/2008, -2/+1I don't get what the big deal about friends are? It allows you to create a network of people with the same interests as you that way you can use shouts to inform your network of articles that might interest the entire group. It's a pretty useful tool. I don't see what the big deal is.
          • robbh66, on 02/26/2008, -0/+3Because those "Friends" don't even read the articles and will just digg your lame ***** if you digg their lame *****? There are people on here who digg hundreds of articles a day without reading a single one of them. How can that possibly be good and useful?
          • zeabu, on 02/26/2008, -0/+3Or "shouting" every single story they submit. Lame.
            If I want I can read "my friends' history", the same way I use google, before asking dumb questions.
          • TheTaoOfBill, on 02/26/2008, -2/+1That's what they were created to do. Spread the word of your article. There is nothing wrong with it. If you don't like it then unfriend them. Some of us enjoy the shouts we get from our friends because it points us directly to articles we'd be interested in. It's very useful.
          • robbh66, on 02/26/2008, -0/+2I agree with your comment in part, because yes, that is what they were created to do. However, as a practical matter, this is FAR from what actually happens. People abuse it day in and day out. You, however, don't appear to be one of them as you don't have an absurdly high number of diggs. But take zaibatsu for example: http://digg.com/users/zaibatsu . 95,500 Diggs. Are you going to tell me that his friend's system is working the way it should?
    • LeeSoong, on 02/26/2008, -1/+6'Shopped.
      - the leptons are all wrong, just look at the pixels.
  • quantumdot, on 02/26/2008, -4/+117One should note that observing electrons changes their quantum mechanical state. The amazing thing here is they seem to be doing the observing without disturbing the atom's "electron rings." The other amazing thing here is that you can for the first time see inside an atom when things happen to it!

    "Although not a capture of movement in the traditional sense but rather a representation of the electron's energy distribution, it is the still the first filmed sequence of the entire event, as opposed to previous attempts that used indirect methods." - Another News Site
    • Hobbes24, on 02/26/2008, -3/+67wow...just...wow.

      i don't know how many of you understand just how incredible this really is...the Heisenberg uncertainty principle led myself, and most others who've taken heavy science courses that this sort of thing would NEVER be possible...
      we may finally be able to discover exactly how the electron orbits the atom!!!

      (i feel like such a ***** nerd right now, getting this excited, haha)
      • sakuraz, on 02/26/2008, -0/+15You're not a nerd.

        I'm studying accounting and even I'm excited!
        • lartones, on 02/26/2008, -3/+19nerd!
        • TheTaoOfBill, on 02/26/2008, -0/+1He is a nerd and so are you but there is nothing wrong with that. Be proud of being a nerd because it's always the nerds who get the most powerful and well paid positions in life.
          • zeabu, on 02/26/2008, -0/+1You don't know the word "Corporation".
      • gravityPersists, on 02/26/2008, -0/+29The uncertainty relation still holds. Many people misinterpret this as a case of being incapable of observing "small things." This is not true, the uncertainty principle is actually from Fourier theorem, and any two non-communicable operators (such as position and momentum) are under this principle (because of wave-particle duality).

        The Uncertainty principle never said anything about probability densities, and that is what this video actually is of (which is still remarkable).
        • gravityPersists, on 02/26/2008, -0/+7Sorry, to be more precise, these are momentum distributions in the video
        • ImmediateAction, on 02/26/2008, -1/+5I think you mean commutable operators, and what you are seeing is the probability distribution of the electron around the atom, not the electron itself, for seeing the electron itself as a point like particle at any instant in time is violating the uncertainty principle. Seeing the electron cloud however is not, since we are not measuring its momentum and position simultaneously (that's a property of two non commuting physical observables).
          • Mrstupid7, on 02/26/2008, -1/+2No it's not. The uncertainty principle states that you can either know the position or the momentum of the electron at any one time. So you can know where an electron is at any one time, but you won't be able to know what it's momentum is.
          • ImmediateAction, on 02/26/2008, -1/+2Yes, that is what I stated, however this video, which would measure not only the position but also the momentum, would constitute the violation. I guess I could have said that seeing the electron (position and momentum) violates the principle. Sorry for the confusion.
          • gravityPersists, on 02/26/2008, -0/+1yes. Commutators, not diseases. I was sleepy!
          • gravityPersists, on 02/26/2008, -0/+1Actualy the video is of a probability distribution of the momentum. I imagine they did this instead of position because quantum field theory, as opposed to quantum mechanics, works with momentum only.
      • chromerium, on 02/26/2008, -0/+4So for us non scientists, what implications does this new method have for science and technology in general? Are we one step closer to any particular breakthrough technology because of this?

        Not putting a downer on it, but I am not a scientist, just a geek layman, so I'm curious.
        • ImmediateAction, on 02/26/2008, -0/+2As of right now I would say it really has no immediate impact on technology, I think it's just a breakthrough in modern science to be able to probe lengths and video tape the results; something we've never seen before.
        • algo, on 02/26/2008, -1/+6atomic upskirt?
          • chromerium, on 02/27/2008, -0/+1Wow, I like that atom's nucleus!

            Neah, baby, show me those protons.
      • bitbytebit, on 02/26/2008, -0/+1The uncertainy principle just means that you can't know both the velocity AND position of an electron (or something to that effect). This news is exciting for other reasons, we have been able to observe one of the 2 for some time.
        • Timmmm, on 02/26/2008, -1/+1I'm not sure about this, but I imagine it's not that you can't *know* its velocity and position accurately, it's just that 'velocity' and 'position' aren't sensible measures at very small scales.

          I expect it is similar to DTFT's where you can't 'know' the frequency and duration of a tone accurately at the same time. It's not like there is missing information it's just that frequency only makes sense over a short period of time, and duration only makes sense for a narrow frequency band.

          Any physicists care to confirm/deny this?
          • JohnFlux, on 02/26/2008, -1/+1That's exactly right. The wavefunction is basically, well, a wave. If the position is very spread out, then it can be a nice sine wave (for example) and thus have a well defined wavelength (which is its energy). If you narrow the position a lot, then you can't really say what the wavelength is, and hence the energy is 'uncertain'.
    • rocket2dmn, on 02/26/2008, -12/+7That's so awesome, time to start rewriting the physics books.
      • gravityPersists, on 02/26/2008, -1/+8How does this constitute a complete change in physics?
        • drakenlot, on 02/26/2008, -1/+3because rocket said it would, duh.
      • SteveMax, on 02/26/2008, -0/+3I guess someone doesn't understand either the uncertainty principle or the experimental uncertainties...
        Heisenberg's principle only says that there is a finite limit to the maximum precision you can measure position and momentum simultaneously. Now, every single experiment has a finite precision. Quantum mechanics allows you to know the position and momentum simultaneously as long as the uncertainties obey Δx∙Δp ≥ ℏ/2. Don't try to pinpoint the position too hard, and you can get the momentum simultaneously; this is what they are doing here. Great new technique, but nothing to "rewrite books".
        • ImmediateAction, on 02/28/2008, -0/+1The problem is measuring both simultaneously gives you an error so large that it makes the measurements essentially useless.
          • SteveMax, on 02/28/2008, -0/+1Not exactly, look at the dimension of ℏ (~10^-34 m kg m/s). You can get an error of the order of 10^-10 m for x (or one atom), and 10^-24 kg m/s for p, which is a couple keV/c (or 1% of the electron mass) and is nothing for a relativistic electron. You just need to understand what you're doing, and what you can expect.
    • gravityPersists, on 02/26/2008, -1/+2You cannot take a picture of an electron for that reason- observing it changes its quantum state. You can think of electrons as anything more than point particles with inherent attributes nature has given it (ie. spin, whatever that means). Essentially, they are taking a video of the effects of the electron orbit. The shifting up and down is probably a precession in the electron about the atom.
      • ImmediateAction, on 02/26/2008, -0/+3It's not the effect of the electron orbit, it's an energy and therefore also a probability distribution, the probability is an observable of the system.
    • jt2322, on 02/26/2008, -8/+1One should note that you are a douchebag.
    • LeeSoong, on 02/26/2008, -1/+3This discovery is the first step to the sensors used in the Heisenberg Compensator.

      http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Heisenberg_compens ...

      When someone asks you how the Heisenberg Compensator works,
      reply, '' it's working very well, thanks for asking. ''
      • hayzeus, on 02/26/2008, -1/+2Hmmm -- I've just been dropping my pants and screaming "HERE-- SEE FOR YOURSELF!" So I guess I've been doing that wrong.
    • node3, on 02/26/2008, -0/+5Just to clarify the implications, the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle doesn't say you can't take a "photo" of an electron. What it says is that the more you pinpoint its exact location, the less you know about its momentum, and vice versa.

      This does not violate Heisenberg. Even so, it's still amazing.
    • sonmi451, on 02/26/2008, -0/+2This does not invalidate Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle; it confirms it. The "film" only captures an electron's momentum distribution, and the results are in agreement with the current theory as indicated here:

      http://www.scientificblogging.com/news_releases/el ...

      It's certainly an experimental breakthrough but not a theoretical one at least for now.
    • dbz253, on 02/26/2008, -3/+1yea, i saw that crap on "what the bleep do we know" too. i don't buy it. if this is the first time that electrons have been filmed, then how did they observe it before? it had to be some sort of sensor that interfered with it. if it just had to do with watching it, then they would all act very differently depending on which direction someone was looking.

      you are trying to give it some sort of lifelike quality, that is just wishful thinking.
    • Mothity, on 02/26/2008, -0/+2No, the video isnt of an atom with its electron rings. It shows the dispertion of energy of an atom whilst being manipulated by the laser. The sequence is on repeat as they filmed this for one oscillation of the light (obviously, the laser) that they were using to observe the electron. I had to do a bit of reading around to find that out though.
      • Mothity, on 02/27/2008, -0/+1sorry, i mean dispersion of energy of an electron, not atom.
  • quantumdot, on 02/26/2008, -2/+67Sorry to keep posting, but there is a much better news article on this at the following URL:

    http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/02/08022 ...
  • FarcicalFart, on 02/26/2008, -3/+38Video:
    http://www.livescience.com/php/video/player.php?vi ...
    • Picaroon, on 02/26/2008, -5/+11Why is Peter Parker briefly shown?
      Oh, and U of A sucks :)
      • AZExile, on 02/26/2008, -2/+1... would that be because they have an amazing science department, or because they don't have the reputation of a University with more lax admission standards than Chandler-Gilbert Community College?
        Oh, sports programs? Yeah. I'll give you that :-P
    • astyler, on 02/26/2008, -4/+4Video and it didn't happen.
    • dinostabOMG, on 02/26/2008, -0/+58Anyone else having trouble getting that player to work? I found this alternative: http://youtube.com/watch?v=Hck3t8hqdsU
      • elipabst, on 02/26/2008, -0/+16So thought that was going to be a rickroll....
      • RedGreen1, on 02/26/2008, -0/+1Thanks much.
      • archivist, on 02/26/2008, -2/+1it looked like a gif animation
      • schwab002, on 02/26/2008, -0/+2I got the original to work with IE tab, but get no satisfaction from ever using that plugin. Thanks.
      • Karai, on 02/26/2008, -0/+5right click the flash object and click "play". took me a moment to figure it out.
      • amesolaire, on 02/26/2008, -0/+2I, too, had trouble getting the video player to work. Disabling AdBlock Plus on that page (or the whole site) fixed it for me.
    • jsaya, on 02/26/2008, -1/+3http://www.atto.fysik.lth.se/video/emovie.avi
    • wicketr, on 02/26/2008, -0/+2Aww. I was expecting to see a little ball circling a bigger brighter ball, and on the small ball little tiny oceans and pieces of land. How disappointing.
    • Skyfire, on 02/26/2008, -0/+3I knew that's what it would sound like!
    • neodorian, on 02/26/2008, -0/+1I was half expecting a RickRoll. Thank you all for proving me wrong.
  • e30guy, on 02/26/2008, -4/+50with freaking laser beams
    • vdog, on 02/26/2008, -1/+5And be before you ask; no, there are no sharks attached.
  • fwertz, on 02/26/2008, -3/+148Dugg for resembling a Windows Media Player Visualization.
  • yodaj007, on 02/26/2008, -4/+40Scientists are perplexed why electrons look like Pacman.
    • KaJuN4, on 02/26/2008, -0/+9Wakka wakka wakka
    • yodaj007, on 02/26/2008, -2/+1Wow! I'm kind of surprised I'm dugg up +32. I figured I'd be dugg down :(
      This made my day.
  • queenmoweeny, on 02/26/2008, -3/+11This is amazing!!
  • cubbiesx, on 02/26/2008, -3/+51um, watched the video. looked like a blue thumbprint dancing to massage parlor new age music. fantastic!
    • CarStan, on 02/26/2008, -3/+3It's the most beatiful thing i've ever seen ( well. besides that plastic bag)
  • seth123q, on 02/26/2008, -17/+5impressive, i know that it is very hard to film something that small but we can hope for a video that is more clear next time.
    • jdh24, on 02/26/2008, -1/+20rofl. wah, they can't make something that's like 10^-20 meters more clear!!
    • Justice101, on 02/26/2008, -1/+6Go back to complaining about the quality of the anti-sat. weapon test footage lol. It's only like 500km up, traveling some multiple of the speed of sound.
    • macweirdo42, on 02/26/2008, -0/+9Yeah, come on... The people on CSI have a machine that can film individual quarks in HD.
  • andywebb95, on 02/26/2008, -4/+39Ahhhhaaaaa told you then existed.
    Picture or it didn't happen my ass.
    • Nudar, on 02/26/2008, -0/+2Funny you say that because I read a book a few years ago that postulated the nonexistence of electrons.
  • captoftheworld, on 02/26/2008, -45/+2Snore...
    • raiden431, on 02/26/2008, -1/+38Snore? This research could have huge ramifications. If we can learn more about the behavior of electrons and the effect they have on the atoms that they leave, it could lead to huge advances in the knowledge of sub-atomic processes and perhaps even have some tremendously useful applications in anything from electronics and communications to power generation.
      • a1532b, on 02/26/2008, -0/+7Who's the jerk that dugg you down? You were completely accurate.
    • itsthebrod, on 02/26/2008, -1/+3Since you apparently think science and its related fields are boring, I suggest you go throw your computer, television, video games, cell phone, and any other electrical device that was created with scientific advancements, such as this one, years ago. I bet you'll be REALLY bored then.
  • omnithought, on 02/26/2008, -3/+82so the universe is a big rave?
  • badgermagics, on 02/26/2008, -0/+8Video mirror?
  • elliotys, on 02/26/2008, -10/+23So will this be on HD-DVD or Blu-ray?
    • blkrabit, on 02/26/2008, -9/+1Put it on HDDVD, about the same number of people will watch it...
    • sakuraz, on 02/26/2008, -2/+2It's currently on intertubes.
    • vdog, on 02/26/2008, -0/+4If you're not sure, I've got an 'up-scaling HDMI DVD player' to sell you.
    • Arachnivore, on 02/26/2008, -0/+1It will simultaneously be on both and neither.
  • Digitalicious, on 02/26/2008, -2/+34For some reason, before viewing the video, I was expecting more than a bunch of indistinguishable dots. I don't know why.
    • JohnFlux, on 02/26/2008, -2/+14Actually 'indistinguishable' is more correct than you might realise. Electrons really /really/ are indistinguishable - even to the universe.

      My favourite example is imagine you had two coins, and flipped them. You could get HH, TH, HT, TT. But if they were indistinguishable, in the way electrons are, then TH would be the same as HT, so you'd only get HH, TH, TT (where TH means one head and one tail). So the first case, there'd be a 1/4 chance of getting HH, and in the second case there'd be a 1/3 change of getting HH.

      It results in a lot of strange effects :-)
      • tetsuwan, on 02/26/2008, -0/+1I don't know who's burying you, it sure as hell isn't me.
      • Scienceisfun, on 02/26/2008, -1/+4That's not exactly correct though. There are still 4 possibilities for the heads/tails outcome, of course it's usually framed in a spin up/spin down context. There are indeed an |HH> state and a |TT> state, and there is a mixed state: 1/sqrt(2)(|HT> + |TH>). All of these are symmetric (ie. don't change) under the exchange of the electrons, and are denoted as triplet states. If electrons (or any fermion) only had spin wavefunctions, none of these states would be allowed due to the Pauli exclusion principle. There is a fourth state -- the singlet state: 1/sqrt(2)(|HT> - |TH>). This is antisymmetric under exchange of the two electrons, which means a negative sign pops in. This exchange (as in the symmetric case) doesn't change the probability density of the system (as it MUST not!) because the -1 factor goes away when you square the wavefunction. Anyway, if you had two fermions that only had spin wavefunctions, they would have to be in the antisymmetric singlet state to obey the Pauli exclusion principle. But, if you add in a spatial part to the wavefunction, all 4 states become allowed, though there are certainly some transition rules related to quantum number conservation (ie. when an electron changes energy levels) that dictate which spin states are allowable.
        • JohnFlux, on 02/26/2008, -0/+0This is true for things like spin, but not for things like collisions where you cannot tell, and even the universe cannot tell, whether two electrons bounced off of each other, or whether they passed by each other, because they 'look' the same.
  • cerealjynx, on 02/26/2008, -1/+21Goddamn, electrons sound freaky as hell!
    • noahgelman, on 02/26/2008, -13/+2its a camera, it doesnt record sound
      • itsthebrod, on 02/26/2008, -0/+7Whoooooooosh...
      • kenyan, on 02/26/2008, -0/+3Actually, I've heard of some of these "camera" things that can actually record sound. Who knew?
  • astyler, on 02/26/2008, -6/+76***** you Heisenberg!
    • UNCCEJ1010, on 02/26/2008, -1/+11I am uncertain as to your meaning.
    • gravityPersists, on 02/26/2008, -2/+15***** you another person who doesn't understand the uncertainty principle!
      • theHM, on 02/26/2008, -0/+5I knew astyler was wrong, but I still lolled.
    • itsthebrod, on 02/26/2008, -0/+5Yeah *****! We're going to build another air ship just to prove it can be done!
  • Lephtovermeet, on 02/26/2008, -15/+6Funny, an electron looks surprisingly like a vagina... On weed!
    • nreynolds, on 02/26/2008, -2/+1most vagina's i've ever met smoked weed.
  • elscorcho717, on 02/26/2008, -4/+21I've always wanted to see what this looked like, and I gotta say, I'm dissapointed.
    • Cndor, on 02/26/2008, -0/+3Yeah, I expected to see something like in science textbook.
  • killerknives, on 02/26/2008, -0/+9im scared
  • BrettSchu, on 02/26/2008, -7/+17Ha, take that Heisenberg uncertainty principle.
    • gravityPersists, on 02/26/2008, -0/+8Try, take that DeBroglie and Fourier, oh wait, it's still valid. Sorry.
  • thebellmaster1x, on 02/26/2008, -0/+6Whoa. Awesome and hypnotic.

    Man, I love the Universe.
    • fee526, on 02/26/2008, -0/+1Yes. I teared up while watching it. The simplicity was overwhelming.
    • groverblue, on 02/27/2008, -0/+1and the Universe loves you...
  • tian2992, on 02/26/2008, -0/+13But, how they did located it!?
  • blkrabit, on 02/26/2008, -8/+0Is this that video from "The Ring"? Are we all going to die now?
  • harusp3x, on 02/26/2008, -3/+25Heisenberg's gonna be pissed.
    • Hangly, on 02/26/2008, -2/+7Dammit, you beat me to it.
      • d0onut, on 02/26/2008, -0/+17So did the other 5 people who said the same thing.
        • Scienceisfun, on 02/26/2008, -0/+1Who all don't understand the uncertainty principle.
        • StormTroopr, on 02/26/2008, -0/+25 other people already said that too, Scienceisfun.
  • pegothejerk, on 02/26/2008, -1/+10so.. beautiful.. should have sent a poet..
    • simpleblob, on 02/26/2008, -0/+3I'm okay to go! I'm okay to go! I'm okay to go...
    • trylleklovn, on 02/26/2008, -0/+1Movie reference unrelated...
  • Hangly, on 02/26/2008, -7/+10Does that mean they can know both the electron's location and velocity?
    Hang on, there's a call on the other line. It's Werner Heisenberg, and he sounds mad.

    Dammit, so beaten...
    • JohnFlux, on 02/26/2008, -0/+6No. They don't know the velocity of the electron.
    • InvisibleMan, on 02/27/2008, -0/+1But they do know the average speed and have video evidence to support this, so its a start.
  • cventura, on 02/26/2008, -1/+7maybe im stupid, but i didnt catch *****, just a ring with lots of colors...
  • theman8631, on 02/26/2008, -0/+132"It takes about 150 attoseconds for an electron to circle the nucleus of an atom. An attosecond is 10^-18 seconds long, or, expressed in another way: an attosecond is related to a second as a second is related to the age of the universe,"

    Just blew my ***** mind
    • jhshukla, on 02/26/2008, -0/+1what puzzles me more is how the heck do they generate such short pulses?
      • shakbhaji, on 02/26/2008, -0/+20they flick the switch on and off very quick-a-like!
        • ljsmithx, on 02/27/2008, -0/+0I'm gunna turn my light on and off really quick and see if i can see electrons flying around my room ;O
    • tetsuwan, on 02/26/2008, -1/+5They use femtosecond pulses to excite an electron plasma that in turn emits even shorter pulses, if I remember correctly.
  • trebuchet03, on 02/26/2008, -1/+24Curse them! They changed its motion by watching it!

    But seriously... "extreme speediness." Did the writer set the dumb down generator to full blast? In any case, very very cool.
    • kernel16, on 02/26/2008, -0/+1EXTREME TO THE MAX!!!!!!!!!!!
    • Shambla, on 02/26/2008, -0/+2"Or in layman's terms: Speedy thing go in, speedy thing come out"
  • sonicularulus, on 02/26/2008, -0/+10i hope they used 70mm Imax technology.

  • baudbwoy, on 02/26/2008, -0/+4all I see is a blue shivery thing, when do we see the electron thingy?
    • tetsuwan, on 02/26/2008, -0/+2The electron is not a point-like particle, and wouldn't look like one.
      • JohnFlux, on 02/26/2008, -0/+0Actually it seems that the electron is a point-like particle, according to QM.
        • tetsuwan, on 02/26/2008, -0/+1Nope, it's not a point-like particle in the classical meaning of the term. It can only be pinned to a fixed position in space for a infinitesimal period of time. Free electrons in space can be treated as point particles within the frame of certain problems, but electron-electron and electron-atom interactions don't make sense if you cling to the particle picture.
          • JohnFlux, on 02/26/2008, -0/+1You are talking about its spread in position. An atom, for example, has a generally-accepted-definition of a radius, but it's uncertainty in position (the wavefunction) can spread out to be many thousands of times larger.

            Electron-electron interaction make sense if you consider that they interact via the electric field. Ditto for electron-atom interactions.
          • tetsuwan, on 02/26/2008, -0/+1Re JohnFlux
            Not only. E.g. electron-hole interactions in localized states are governed by wavefunction overlap. My point is that the concept of a point-like electron orbiting around a nucleus is not a good one.
      • Mothity, on 02/26/2008, -0/+1so the blue bit is the electron's path...? and the dark bit in the middle is what its orbiting? i dont really get it, please explain as the video wasnt too helpful at pointing out what was what.
    • AZExile, on 02/26/2008, -0/+0Hard to believe that the few seconds of a fuzzy blue shivery thingy could be one of the most significant films you've watched in your life, isn't it?

      //I'm floored. This is amazing and mind-blowing.
  • systemghost, on 02/26/2008, -1/+23This is a pretty cool visual, but Windows Media Player has been doing that for years.
  • JavertHolmes, on 02/26/2008, -1/+10Are textbooks going to be updated to note that electrons in motion tend to take the shape of Tron's disc?
  • harveywalbanger, on 02/26/2008, -2/+4once you observe them, they are gone to some other random location... Like playing whack-a-mole in another dimension with a tiny mallet.
  • BenInEden, on 02/26/2008, -1/+2Hmm ... my knowledge of quantum mechanics and the wording of this article are not playing nicely together. What do you mean "seeing" an electron. That's not even a coherent statement! Seeing as we define it is a microscopic-macroscopic+ phenomenon. Things at that size no more have a look than the invisible man has a look.

    It seems to me what we *must* be seeing is a color histogram representing the probability function of the electron??? So we're seeing the electron zooming around it's shell???

    Hmmm I suppose I will have to read more.
    • JohnFlux, on 02/26/2008, -0/+4It seems to me what we *must* be seeing is a color histogram representing the probability function of the electron???
      Right. Well specifically you are seeing a point at every point where the electron was found.

      > So we're seeing the electron zooming around it's shell???

      You simply know where the electron was. You cannot deduce how it actually moved from this (i.e. we don't know its velocity at any point)
  • Xanadude, on 02/26/2008, -9/+2This is the biggest news since "Erection Filmed For First Time."
    • Stupidumb, on 02/26/2008, -2/+1People who digg you down are ***** stupid.
  • Jareth86, on 02/26/2008, -1/+5Video isn't working. Mirror?
  • cinder, on 02/26/2008, -1/+12Bricks. Shat.
  • Daiken, on 02/26/2008, -0/+19Can anyone explain what we're seeing here? I'm guessing the main atom is in the middle, and the electron is moving around so quickly and jumping from shell to shell, that the blue indicates where it is some of the time, and the brighter colours indicate where it is more often.
    • tjobe, on 02/26/2008, -0/+1I've been trying to figure this out too. I think you nailed it. Thanx.
  • blueplanet, on 02/26/2008, -1/+5i was under the impression that any photon that could be used to detect an electron would have to have momentum propotional to said electron, and would thus collide, and disturb it. I mean I'm only a physics major here, but I thought the Heisenberg uncertainty principle was pretty big, lol
    • tetsuwan, on 02/26/2008, -1/+4It looks like a superposition of excited states. I work in the same house as this dude, I should ask him what the image really mean. And read the Phys. Rev. Let., of course.
  • eljesus788, on 02/26/2008, -4/+1if the atom's model changes again im going to be so pissed. I remember it changing like six years back and nobody told me about it for like 3 years. no one made i big deal about it but i was all like wtf you've been teaching me for my entire life was a lie.
    p.s. the change was when people "discovered" that electrons dont orbit the nucleus. they vibrate or something.
    • yeti22, on 02/26/2008, -0/+1Um, that was way more than 6 years ago. It was more like in the '20s, when quantum theory was developed.

      On a related note, I'm still pissed that they got rid of the 5 kingdoms right after I graduated high school.
  • 4d669, on 02/26/2008, -6/+6Einstein was right. Finally we'll get rid of this Quantum/Uncertainty nonsense and move on to real science.
    • tetsuwan, on 02/26/2008, -0/+6Nope, what you'll see is still a probability distribution. The energy uncertainty of such a short pulse of light is similar to its nominal value, viz 10 eV ±5eV
      • JohnFlux, on 02/26/2008, -0/+3Just to expand on your point...
        This means that you can't use the energy of the pulse to work out the velocity of the particle. If we knew that the photon had exactly 10eV energy beforehand, then we could measure the energy afterwards and know that the difference in energy came from the velocity of the electron. But since our uncertainty in the energy is so high, the uncertainty in our measurement of the velocity of the electron is very high.
        • tetsuwan, on 02/26/2008, -0/+3yes, the point being that the uncertainty principle isn't violated at all.
  • DjViral, on 02/26/2008, -4/+3so electrons are blue , or is it infared? or just the light
    • JohnFlux, on 02/26/2008, -0/+3Color and wavelength have no real meaning here. Wavelength only makes sense for long pulses of light.

      The picture is false-color showing where the electron was found.
  • rcran, on 02/26/2008, -1/+1To me it looks like the bat signal.
  • 7stitches, on 02/26/2008, -3/+11i smell a dead cat
  • Kanidia, on 02/26/2008, -0/+7Sorry if this is inaccurate, but I thought we couldn't picture the electrons (or even a model of an atom) because photons don't have that small of a wavelength enough for us to see it visibly? Wouldn't this therefore, be considered more of a radio-detected electron than a visible image? Again, I'm not sure, I'm just asking if people would know.
    • tetsuwan, on 02/26/2008, -0/+2It depends on the wavelength of the light. Visible light indeed has too long wavelength to image electrons. This is probably soft X-ray, but I haven't read the paper yet.
    • JohnFlux, on 02/26/2008, -0/+4When you are talking about an attosecond pulse, then wavelength means nothing. The uncertaity principle also says that short pulses have a very high uncertainty in their wavelength.
      • tetsuwan, on 02/26/2008, -0/+2You will still have a center wavelength, though.
      • tetsuwan, on 02/26/2008, -0/+1You will still have a center wavelength, though.
  • sheitmar, on 02/26/2008, -0/+11Youtube video, couldn't get the other one to work:

    http://youtube.com/watch?v=32uEvwxNJvE
    • AgarwaenUmarth, on 02/26/2008, -0/+1Dugg for great justice and a failure to RickRoll!
  • donkz, on 02/26/2008, -2/+10Clearly photshoped
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