The technology might also one day be harnessed to send information across "quantum cryptography networks," which would use single atoms as data-storage devices and quantum physics to guarantee privacy, Kielpinski said. (Also see "Higgs Boson Found? Without 'God Particle,' No Galaxies-And No Life.") Current techniques-involving attaching special molecules to DNA-are potentially harmful to cells. The shadow-imaging technique could one day enable scientists to study DNA inside living cells by shining a laser at them and observing patterns of light absorption, the researchers say. (Related: "Proton Smaller Than Thought-May Rewrite Laws of Physics.") The group is also working on increasing the resolution of their images, so that it might one day be possible to see how the electrons orbiting an atom affect the shape of its shadow. Since capturing the unique picture, the team has been refining their technique, creating (as yet unreleased) photos of ytterbium shadows twice as dark as in the above image, said Kielpinski, a physicist at Australia's Griffith University. Atoms, he added, are the smallest things that can be seen in visible light, and though the team's shadow shots are unprecedented, atoms themselves have been photographed before. so we would need different laser systems to use this technique on a different atom," said study leader Dave Kielpinski. "Each element responds to different specific wavelengths. The team used ytterbium because they knew they could create lasers of the right color to be strongly absorbed by the element. The ytterbium atom absorbed a tiny portion of the light, and the resulting shadow was magnified by a lens attached to a microscope, then recorded via a digital camera sensor. They then shot a laser beam-about a thousand times wider than the atom-at the ytterbium. The pioneering shutterbugs used an electrical field to suspend a charged atom, or ion, of the element ytterbium in a vacuum chamber. ( Extreme Scientific Imaging: Best of 2011 Named.) The imaging technique could have big implications for genetic research and cryptography, researchers say. The rest of the photography competition finalists and other category winners are also worth a look, so be sure to check them out.Scientists have taken the first ever snapshot of an atom's shadow-the smallest ever photographed using visible light. It’s not every day you get to see one of the fundamental building blocks of reality, but there it is, in all its glory. The winning picture was taken through a window of the ultra-high vacuum chamber that houses the ion trap. 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 distance between the small needle tips is about two millimetres. ‘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 photograph’s description reads as follows: “A back-of-the-envelope calculation showed the numbers to be on my side, and 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.” “The idea of being able to see a single atom with the naked eye had struck me as a wonderfully direct and visceral bridge between the minuscule quantum world and our macroscopic reality,” the photographer, David Nadlinger, explains. Don't Miss : Today’s deals: Early Black Friday sales, $15 off AirPods Pro 2, $25 Fire Stick 4K, air fryers, more
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