First ever photo of a single atom hovering in thin air

[tripplej]

from bgr.com

"‘Single Atom in an Ion Trap’, by David Nadlinger, from the University of Oxford, shows the atom held by the fields emanating from the metal electrodes surrounding it. The distance between the small needle tips is about two millimetres.

When illuminated by a laser of the right blue-violet colour the atom absorbs and re-emits light particles sufficiently quickly for an ordinary camera to capture it in a long exposure photograph. The winning picture was taken through a window of the ultra-high vacuum chamber that houses the ion trap."

 

[Todd Anderson]

That's pretty incredible.

Nice find!

 

[Sonnie Parker]

Truly amazing!

 

[tesseract]

It appears to be 5% the diameter of those two millimeters. If so, that is quite a large atom!

 

[Matthew J Poes]

I saw the article when they first announced it. It is totally cool!

 

[tesseract]

I have to wonder which element it is.

 

[tesseract]

Also, not thin air, it is an actual vacuum.

 

[Sonnie Parker]

Well that would make the air pretty thin wouldn't it.

 

[tesseract]

Air? What air?

 

[Sonnie Parker]

See... it was so thin it just disappeared and now you can't see it.

 

[tesseract]

The atom we are seeing... is the thinnest air, ever!