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See the original image at sciencedaily.com —

Researchers Discover Electrons That Behave Like Light

sciencedaily.com — These newly discovered electronic states of matter may enable powerful new electronic devices that exploit the principles of quantum mechanics to compute and communicate.

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  • mohsenxp, on 07/29/2008, -1/+1Good stuff!!
  • Poland, on 07/29/2008, -1/+12SCIENCE!
  • pimpnamedjino, on 07/29/2008, -2/+2Brilliant.
  • Papajohn56, on 07/29/2008, -0/+15I thought this was obvious through the double slit experiment, and the DeBroglie hypothesis. The crystal is just a medium like air, with a different amount of diffraction.
    • cr250guy, on 07/29/2008, -0/+9I was coming here to write the same thing, we've known the wave nature of electrons,and all matter, for a long time now. i think the article and title are both just poorly written.
  • eztips, on 07/29/2008, -5/+10Oh wait! An electron exhibited standard properties of subatomic particles according to the known laws of quantum mechanics?!?! It's a miracle! Who ever knew electron sometimes behave and exhibit properties associated with light, aka photons?! I meanthis is a breakthrough! Particle-wave duality?! I never knew electrons behaved such ways-

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wave-particle_duality

    I mean light doesn't do that, right!?

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photon

    Who knows what will be discovered next, maybe we'll find out neutrinos have mass!!!! Hooray!

    Buried for... the entire thing
    • noahgelman, on 07/29/2008, -4/+1Look this up

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douchebag
    • veeshy, on 07/29/2008, -0/+2It's not that this is something new, people have predicted it, but have never observed it. Now it's been observed, and can hopefully be applied to circuits.
    • dsmx, on 07/29/2008, -0/+1I thought we'd already established that under certain conditions electrons behave like light? I remember doing an experiment for example where you get interference pattern like you do with light when it's passed trough a double slit.
    • Taiyoryu, on 07/29/2008, -0/+1@extips

      You should learn the difference between hypothesis and observation and how they fit within the scientific method.
  • ogore, on 07/29/2008, -0/+4This is pretty much high school physics. They have known that matter can have a wavelength for ages.
    e.g. the Electron microscope - electrons can have have a smaller wavelength than visible light and hence see smaller matter at higher resolutions.
  • ToiletGhost, on 07/29/2008, -2/+6"Electrons move through space like tiny baseballs."

    No they don't. You got to love stupid science analogies
    • sockpuppets, on 07/29/2008, -1/+5Have you ever seen a tiny baseball travel through space?
  • wijzewillem, on 07/29/2008, -2/+1Good stuff, too bad the title is a bit dumb, of course electrons behave partly like light. Cool thing here is that they manage to manipulate them so that they behave more like light than they usually do! Not something you'd manage in a high-school experiment.
  • eztips, on 07/29/2008, -0/+1http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4TdK6rRBMY
  • samyoungguitar, on 07/29/2008, -0/+2rad.. now make me a hot chick
  • mohsenxp, on 07/29/2008, -1/+0As always the diggers know more than research scientists.
  • karmabandit, on 07/29/2008, -0/+3Actual title from researchers: "Phase Transitions of Dirac Electrons in Bismuth"
    Digg title: "Researchers Discover Electrons That Behave Like Light"

    As you can probably guess, the real experiment has almost nothing to do with the sensational headline. The scientists showed that at relatively high magnetic field and low temperature, the electrons in Bismuth transition into a new state of matter. That's it. The word "light" doesn't even appear in the article the scientists wrote, nor does it try to draw any parallels to photons or light or anything the headline might make you guess.

    Popular science articles are basically a huge load of fail. I doubt one in ten actually gets even remotely close a proper discussion. I understand that it's hard to make things accessible to laymen-- but having a hard to understand summary is better than an incorrect one, isn't it?
  • Icetype, on 07/29/2008, -0/+1The photo attached to the submission is a bong?
  • afireinside13t, on 07/29/2008, -0/+1Here's the link to the actual article abstract:

    http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/321 ...
  • mikecurry, on 07/30/2008, -0/+1Is that e-peen?
  •  

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