Photographed: The Glow from a Single, Hovering Strontium Atom

Posted on Categories Discover Magazine

In the photo above, you’re looking at a single, positively charged strontium atom suspended by electric fields.

It’s an atom, visible to the naked eye.

Whoa, right?

David Nadlinger, a quantum physicist and PhD candidate at Oxford University, is the person who put it all together. He titled his picture “Single Atom in an Ion Trap.” A blue-violet laser blasts the atom, which then absorbs and re-emits enough light particles to be photographed with conventional equipment. So, technicall

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