Light: Particle or Wave ?
Remember physics class in high school where they give you the box and you’re supposed to shine a light through some holes and see light as waves but it passes through the holes as particles? This photo brought it all back. Isn’t it great?
The photo is from an article in New ScientistTech. Among other things:
Researchers have found a way to generate the shortest-ever flash of light – 80 attoseconds (billionths of a billionth of a second) long.
Such flashes have already been used to capture an image of a laser pulse too short to be “photographed” before. (The photo with this post.)
Remember me, science geek? I just thought the photo was “cool” — yeah, I’m dating myself but so what. Imagine taking a photo of light. That long ago science class project just seems even more real to me now.
With this technology, they believe they may be able to photograph electrons going around a atom. Well, it beats trying to shrink a man/woman to go take a look for them and sending back sketches that have to be enlarged. Oh, don’t tell me you didn’t watch The Incredible Shrinking Man and think at the end “I wonder what he’ll see when he gets really small?” I can’t be the only one who wondered what happened next.
Now, I wonder what will these scientists do next?