The Photo Of A Single Atom Hanging In The Air Brought The First Prize To The Physicist

This is the first time in the history of science a single atom is caught under the state of suspension in air. Among the countless scientific experiments, the photo promises to become a big step to the technology in the future.

In this photo, you will see a tiny blue speck which is almost impossible to observe by naked eyes. It is ‘flying’ at the central location between the two electrodes while they almost touch together. This speck is a single atom.

The truth has been proven through a series of experiments that each atom is a constituent building matter. Atom exists everywhere, from the biggest things to the smallest things; however, up to now, it seems to be unable to see a single atom in the air.

In February 2018, David Nadlinger, a physicist of the University of Oxford, took a photo of a strontium atom with the positive charge. And then, he got the first prize with this photo when bringing it to a photo competition which was held by Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council in the UK.

To explain more particularly, the two needles are placed 2mm apart and create electric fields, which leads to the result as we have mentioned above: a single atom is being suspended in the air. To maintain this state, David conducted the experiment in a vacuum chamber to supercool the whole setup and used a blue-violet laser to backlight the atom. Due to energy from the laser, this atom emitted photons, and after the long exposure, the physicist got the impressive photo as above.

He revealed about his idea concerning observing a single atom without specialized tools. This can be considered as a bridge connecting the tiny quantum world to the macroscopic reality.

David had to make a back-of-the-envelope calculation to reach the ideal numbers, as well as arrange camera and tripods at the suitable positions of the lab one Sunday afternoon. Finally, this photo brought the first prize to him at the photo competition.

How to set up the lab doesn’t only serve the purpose of taking the photo, it aims to help the physicist study quantum properties of a single atom or research how to construct everything, from atomic clocks to quantum computers.