Electrons on video

I expected something so ground breaking to be a tad more exciting :-( Not exactly up there with say the Hubble deep field photo.

Dave.

Werner Heisenberg must be stirring in his grave.......

It's not possible to see an electron without changing its velocity.....

Yeah, sort of conflicts with the uncertainty principle a bit. The things people will do to get you to watch an add Sucks a few in .

fritz a écrit :

Hello I think it would be better to read the relating papers first in order to know what they are talking about.... Phys. Rev. Lett. 100, 073003 (2008) is a start. Peter

I saw that reference, have you actually read it ? Please post a weblink, or a summary of the paper.

In any case, all I did was state a fact, meaning that you cannot actually 'see' an electron orbiting in the way the misleading heading implied.

fritz a écrit :

Hello. well, I read the abstract,enough to show me that the authors' goal was NOT to image "an electron". There are already many successful experiments manipulating single electrons by observing evidence of their location. Sherlock Holmes would have been delighted...

A Google-search with "mauritsson et al." will give you the references to several papers on their experiments and conclusions.

It all has to do with interaction between electrons and electromagnetic fields or, if suitable, photons. The news about this experiment was written by journalists, they tend to insist heavily on the more "scoopish" aspects in detriment to physical aspects. I would credit the authors, doing a very refined and difficult experiment, with some sense of what they are doing.

(snip)

Well there a many small particles that can be identified by evidence of their locations.... neutrinos etc That is an entirely different to "seeing"an actual particle. The web reference is a complete fraud and you shouldn't give it credibility for the sake of nitpicking

OT

As an aside, I saw a cloud chamber in operation for the first time a few weeks back at the Exploratorium in San Francisco. Very cool, and very eerie being able to "see" cosmic radiation particles and their path, many of them passing right through you. I always knew about this, but "seeing it" for real makes you think WOW!

Dave.

Do you think they can pass through Phil's thick skull?