An electron rides on a light wave after just having been pulled away from an atom. Credit: Lund University
Scientists have filmed an electron in motion for the first time, using a new technique tha...
An electron rides on a light wave after just having been pulled away from an atom. Credit: Lund University 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.
Previously it was impossible to photograph electrons because of their extreme speediness, so scientists had to rely on more indirect methods. These methods could only measure the effect of an electron's movement, whereas the new technique can capture the entire event.
Extremely short flashes of light are necessary to capture an electron in motion. A technology developed within the last few years can generate short pulses of intense laser light, called attosecond pulses, to get the job done.
"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," said Johan Mauritsson of Lund University in Sweden.
Using another laser, scientists can guide the motion of the electron to capture a collision between an electron and an atom on film.
The length of the film Mauritsson and his colleagues made corresponds to a single oscillation of a wave of light . The speed of the event has been slowed down for human eyes. The results are detailed in the latest issue of the journal Physical Review Letters.
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HAHAH! Good post. Science has absolutely been hijacked or co-opted by business. And as you point out, everything business touches turns to shit. "Medications" are a perfect example. Big Pharma. Same goes for the military industrial complex. Look at NASA for crying out loud. You could also say the same for religion and governments. The three behemoths of humanity are eating us alive.
everything looks like everything else, brain cells and the universe as a whole, those shells and the formation of cyclones, dna looks like string, and to top it all we see ALL these things with LIGHT. even under an electron microscope the action, reaction sensing and computation require light. so natrually we assume everything is made of light, except no, there is "dark" matter aswell that is somehow not visible to light. apparently, i've yet to see conclusive proof of dark matters existance.
@Sovereign19 i could be wrong but that ball of yarn is most likely the probabilty area of where the electron is. Since we cannot really know without some uncertainty where it is and how fast it is going. This is its wave....
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