
Photo of a suspended, glowing single atom wins photography prize - Anon84
https://bigthink.com/news/photo-of-a-single-atom-wins-science-photography-prize
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ajdegol
That site is pretty painful to visit. Is it someone’s business model to submit
stuff like this to hacker news?

Edit: I mean it’s called BigThink; does the flashing adverts (on mobile)
between every sentence not make that name a little ironic?

~~~
rendall
BigThink inspired me to find out if it's possible to _exclude_ results from
Google search results. It's not. At least, not through Google.

With DuckDuckGo, it's possible by including `-site:bigthink.com` in the search
query

~~~
miahi
The same -site:bigthink.com flag works on Google searches.

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jacquesm
Better link, article is (2018)

[https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2018/02/trapped-
atom...](https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2018/02/trapped-atom-
photograph-long-exposure-competition-spd/)

Also, modals that lock the page should be forbidden.

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ebg13
From the article: _you can see with the naked eye_

Also from the article: _long exposure photograph_

Only one of those is correct. Naked eyes can't do long exposures.

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FreakyT
Not necessarily; cameras in general tend to have much worse low light
performance than our eyes.

Take, for example, the night sky. You can easily see the stars with the naked
eye, but try getting them to show up in a photo. You’ll almost certainly need
a long exposure.

~~~
ramraj07
He didn't say he saw it with his naked eye though.

However, at least by some metrics, the human eye can detect even a single
photon. So if he shut off all other sources of visible light in the room, and
sat there for a bit, he should start seeing the light (assuming he's young,
red light perception decreases the older you get).

But then, for this to work, the only detail you need on your side is proof
that only one atom is emitting light.

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CGamesPlay
> When I set off to the lab with camera and tripods one quiet Sunday
> afternoon, I was rewarded with this particular picture of a small, pale blue
> dot.

I wonder if this was deliberate, for me it poetically evokes Carl Sagan. [0]

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pale_Blue_Dot](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pale_Blue_Dot)

~~~
mclightning
I would be surprised if it wasn't

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kragen
A similar phenomenon makes it possible to see 4-meter-wide dirt roads in the
country on 15-meter-resolution Landsat photos.

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clarry
How do you handle a single atom? How do you know there's only one atom?

~~~
fsh
There is a number of trapping techniques for ions (Paul trap, Penning trap)
and for neutral atoms (magneto-optical trap, optical tweezer, optical
lattice).

In the case of trapped ions, their mutual repulsion keeps them tens of
micrometers apart, so one can easily resolve the individual ions on a camera
image with modest magnification. This is an image of 9 ions taken by the same
group that made the artistic image in the article:
[https://www2.physics.ox.ac.uk/sites/default/files/imce/248/c...](https://www2.physics.ox.ac.uk/sites/default/files/imce/248/ca43xtal.jpg)

For neutral atoms one can for example have a tweezer whose trapping region is
so small that only a single atom fits inside.

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baq
meta: this is one of those achievements where unsubstantial comment policy is
really going against human nature. my initial instinct is to just type 'holy
shit' and a line of exclamation marks.

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mdorazio
Needs a (2018) tag.

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sidcool
As far as my limited understanding goes, the atom does not strictly have an
enclosure like a marble. It's a probabilistic space with nucleus at the
centre. So here, are we looking at the nucleus itself?

~~~
kijin
I don't think nuclei emit any light except when they're either fusing or
breaking apart. The light is probably coming from a cloud of excited
electrons, a certain number of which have an extremely high probability of
existing near each Strontium nucleus.

~~~
the8472
> I don't think nuclei emit any light except when they're either fusing or
> breaking apart.

There's always exceptions, thorium has a low-energy isomer that decays via
gamma rays that are in the UV range.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isotopes_of_thorium#Thorium-22...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isotopes_of_thorium#Thorium-229m)

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MaximusAR
What does anything have to do the origin of the atom? If it is a single atom,
it doesn't have the properties of its molecule. The following sentence makes
me think all the article is BS, or the reporter confused a molecule with an
atom ---> "Strontium is a soft, silvery metal that burns in air and reacts
with water. It's best known for giving fireworks and flares their brilliant
red glow, and for being one of the key ingredients in 'glow-in-the-dark'
paints and plastics, as it can absorb light and re-emit it slowly. Which is
exactly what happened in this photograph."

~~~
krastanov
The choice of atoms in these experiments have a lot to do with the way they
interact with light. This is very much related to their behavior in chemistry
and paints. Sure, not all properties are the same as for the bulk material,
especially if we are talking about metals, but many do carry over.

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moralestapia
How do they know it's one single atom instead of a small bunch of them?

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bishalb
I thought atoms were invisible even with advanced microscopes.

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robjan
FTA: "The Strontium atom appears larger than its true size because it was
emitting light, and was oscillating slightly, over the course of the long
exposure."

~~~
fsh
I believe the journalist misunderstood this point. Trapped ions do oscillate
somewhat, but the amplitude should be way below the resolution of this imaging
system. Most likely the finite spot size is due to the finite resolution and
maybe some blooming from over-exposure.

~~~
mattkrause
Exactly. It's really imaging the point-spread function of the camera + window.

~~~
RantyDave
It's a _very_ accurate way of doing it though. You know exactly where the
point source is and ... that it is as close to a point as you're going to get.
I wonder if this has an application in optics?

~~~
mattkrause
Hehe yeah, but probably hideously expensive, and there are cheaper ways to get
real point sources.

Quantum dots are a few nanometers in size (so << the wavelength that they
emit) and you can get a solution of them from Sigma Aldrich for ~$500. People
mix them into their samples and then use that to deconvolve the image/volume
that they acquire.

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novacole
It’s not an atom, it’s a picture of the light emitted from an atom. So it’s a
picture of light.

~~~
crooked-v
All pictures are actually pictures of the light either emitted by or reflected
from things.

~~~
novacole
What does this atom look like? Do you see an atom or do you see light? Of
course, all pictures are pictures of light. But there’s a difference between
taking a picture of the light coming from a light bulb and a picture of a
light bulb, as I am sure you’re aware.

~~~
msla
> But there’s a difference between taking a picture of the light coming from a
> light bulb and a picture of a light bulb, as I am sure you’re aware.

OK, explain it.

~~~
novacole
Look at a light bulb when the filament is heated and is emitting light. Then
look at it when it is not. The only people who can’t see the difference are
blind, literally.

~~~
kragen
When the filament is cold, you can see it because of light that comes from it
after having been reflected off of it, rather than having been emitted from it
originally; or, if it's dark on a light background, because of light that
comes from other parts of the lightbulb after being transmitted through it
from behind. In all of these cases, what you see in the photo is light that
came from the lightbulb, and all of them are equally legitimately "pictures of
the lightbulb", although they might display more or less detail.

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mirimir
> NoScript detected a potential Cross-Site Scripting attack

> from [https://edge.bigthink.com](https://edge.bigthink.com) to
> [https://js.stripe.com](https://js.stripe.com).

> Suspicious data:

> (URL) [https://js.stripe.com/v3/elements-inner-
> card-212...b40.html#...](https://js.stripe.com/v3/elements-inner-
> card-212...b40.html#style\[base\]\[fontFamily\]="Gotham+Narrow+SSm+A",+"Gotham+Narrow+SSm+B",+"Helvetica+Neue",+Helvetica,+Roboto,+Arial,+sans-
> serif&style\[base\]\[fontSize\]=14px&style\[base\]\[color\]=#1a1a1a&componentName=card&wait=false&rtl=false&keyMode=live&apiKey=pk_live_cFe...AEV&origin=https://edge.bigthink.com&referrer=https://edge.bigthink.com/users/subscribe?p=1&pu=1&utm_medium=organic&utm_source=bigthink&controllerId=__privateStripeController1)

WTF is _that_ about?

Setup for "Join Premium"?

But why talk to Stripe in advance?

Edit: Hey, I apologize for going off topic.

But I'm just a little surprised that a site would want to trigger XSS
warnings. And why they'd risk it.

