I do wonder if it was the actual atom or maybe just an artifact produced by the focusing of the laser light. On a crude level of explanation that most have seen, it could be like what one would see when focusing the lens on a flashlight. Neat either way but lets see if someone else can replicate and hopefully help confirm it!

You two goofs are no better than Apollo Moon landing ccnspiracists.

nwt... Really? I'm a goof because I hope for confirmation but question a reported outcome? Guess you haven't done many peer reviews of research journal submissions.

Not a conspiracy nut here, sorry. Just a skeptical scientist that has learned through trial, error, and success (often my own and of close colleagues) that things we think are one thing may turn out to be something totally different. A perfect example is cold fusion.

I'd love to see this process replicated and supported. The desire for replication and proof is what separates the real scientists from the media.

Photoshop? No.

But I do agree with Mike. Could be something else.

You don't belong in scientific conversations, do you?

You've never sat in a lab, have you?

I tend to stand in them.

Awesome James... good luck, and keep us posted.

Emission Spectra, gives you the wavelengths which will be absorbed by an atom...

Buzzzzzzz! Thanks for playing...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absorption_spectra

Yes, science is great and this is why SCIENCE matters, not religion.

which leads me to think that completely blocking the light in an instant would require the stuff inside the atom to be moving faster than the light was traveling through the atom, otherwise the shadow would be a framework of sparse dots or whatever . . .

What about the same speed, which is something electrons do?

@Fianchetto:

You wrote this:

What about the same speed, which is something electrons do?

I am reasonably certain that there is some key bit of information which I am missing, and this is one of the reasons I like to ponder stuff like this . . .

The current way I visualize an atom is that it has a big thing in the center, which as I recall is a proton, but it also has a lot of smaller "satellites" orbiting around the proton, and these "satellites" are called "electrons", where the entire thing is a bit like our planetary system, where in the analogy, metaphor, or simile the sun corresponds to the proton and the various planets correspond to the electrons . . .

Based on this model, it appears logical to me that there is a lot of mostly "empty" space in the "solar system", although technically it probably is not completely and totally "empty", per se, because there probably is other stuff . . .

The thought exercise is to imagine a huge LASER beam shining from somewhere in outer space, where the diameter of the LASER beam is considerably greater than the diameter of the solar system . . .

And somewhere on the opposite side of our region of outer space from the source of the LASER beam there is a big sheet of film or perhaps a huge iPod camera type of thing, and as the LASER beam shines on the solar system, whatever parts of the LASER beam are blocked by the sun, planets and assorted moons, comets, and asteroids are recorded on the piece of film or huge iPod camera chip as "shadows" . . .

At present, intuition strongly suggests to me that the "shadow" cast by the solar system should be a set of reasonably distinct and isolated dots, where the bulk of the LASER beam simply travels undisturbed through the "empty" space between the sun, planets, moons, and so forth, but this is not what the photograph or image of the atom shows . . .

This might be a matter of the resolution of the image, where at a higher resolution there will be spaces, in which case one should be able to identify the proton and electrons, but perhaps not . . .

Regarding the relative speed aspect, consider that instead of a solar system, there is just one tiny planet or even better a tiny spaceship . . .

In this though exercise, the LASER beam is shining through "empty" space, where it lands on the sheet of film or whatever, which is fine and probably behaves the way one imagines it should behave, where the film records a snapshot of the LASER beam that is a complete circle or whatever with no shadows . . .

Now, consider that the tiny spaceship and its crew are tasked with the job of blocking the LASER beam to create a shadow on the film . . .

The problem that I have with this scenario is that for the tiny spaceship to block a lot of the LASER beam, the tiny spaceship needs to be in a lot of places essentially at the same instant, which is based on the idea that each "snapshot" of the LASER beam maps to a complete set of light particles, photons, or something similar to a "slice" of light, where the LASER beam actually is a "pulsating' series of such slices of light . . .

In other words, consider the LASER beam to be like a machine that fires tennis balls or baseballs so that tennis players and batters can practice their swings and whatever, but instead of firing one tennis ball or one baseball, the machine fires a set of them . . .

So, the machine fires a set of tennis balls and then the tennis balls that are not blocked are recorded on the film as light, while the tennis balls that are blocked are recorded on the film as shadows . . .

Given the constraint that the "tennis player" cannot move faster than the speed of the set of tennis balls, how does the "tennis player" (which in this analogy, metaphor, or simile is a proton or a set of electrons) move from tennis ball to tennis ball in such a way that a lot of the tennis balls are blocked, which creates a shadow?

I continue to ponder this, but at present it appears to be intuitive to think that the "tennis player" needs to be able to move faster within its "sheet" or vector plane than the tennis balls are moving through the same "sheet" or vector plane, and this is where there is a problem, since if I understand everything correctly the tennis balls are move at the speed of light, hence if the "tennis player" or tiny spaceship is moving faster, then it is moving faster than the speed of light . . .

Most likely, the only clue this provides is that I truly have no practical concept of the way this stuff actually works, but it is interesting to ponder, and it might lead to an epiphany sooner or later . . .

On the other hand, if the exposure time for the film is long-as contrasted to being infinitesimally short-then it would be a time-lapse type of thing where on average over time enough of the particles or photons of the LASER beam are blocked to create the illusion of a shadow in the shape of the atom, which might be what is happening . . .

In other words, with a vastly rapid shutter speed, the "camera" would record only the shadows of the sun, planets, moons, and so forth as tiny dots showing the relative positions at that instant in time, but if you set the "camera" so that its shutter is open for long time, then as the components of the "solar system" move, each tiny "shadow" is recorded, and over time you get a big composite "shadow" which is the outline of the entire solar system with all the interior filled-in with shadow pixels, and this makes a bit more intuitive sense, really . . .

Lots of FUN! :-)

As a bit of follow-up, it is useful to understand that the way I make sense of mathematics is very strange and in some respects is a bit mind-boggling . . .

When I was in school, what happened is that between semesters I forgot everything that I learned about mathematics, so at the start of the next semester when I took the next higher mathematics course I started over from the beginning, which I can do because I am vastly skilled with patterns, and all I need to do is to identify the patterns that apply . . .

Explained another way, I think that most people probably remember and understand everything about Calculus I when they start a course in Calculus II, but not me, because I forgot all of it during semester break, so for me when I start a course on Calculus II I have to learn everything all over plus a lot of new stuff, which I can do, and this happened with Calculus III, Differential Equations, Probability and Statistics with Calculus, Advanced Calculus, and so on and so forth, with the result that I am very good at arithmetic and can do a bit of Algebra, some basic Trigonometry, and a bit of Geometry, but best wishes on being able to do anything else . . .

Yet, I can visualize Curl, and understood it instantly . . .

For all practical purposes, each mathematics course is like learning a new and completely different foreign language, which is pretty strange . . .

But perhaps most disturbingly, I never learned how to prove stuff, so even though I took and passed enough mathematics courses to qualify for an undergraduate degree in Mathematics, I decided to go with Computer Science instead, and the reality here in the sound isolation studio is that I am not certain that I know how to prove the Pythagorean Theorem . . .

On the good side, I am not encumbered by knowledge, which strange as it might be is stellar when one wants to have an open mind about stuff, really . . .

Really! :-D

Baldenario, it's nice to know I'm not the only Math BS who can't prove a thing, but intuitively understands it all. I, too, initially ended up in infosys. ;-) I enjoyed reading your speculations.

@SeptikSkeptik:

Glad you enjoyed it!

The patterns in mathematics are not so difficult to recognize, but for me software engineering is the more naturally intuitive activity, as is music, for sure . . .

For sure! :-)

P. S. Here in the sound isolation studio, intuition strongly suggests that physicists soon will discover that instead of being a Higgs boson there actually is a virtual festival of them, or at least more than one . . .

I remember when the first quark was discovered, and very quickly a second quark was discovered, and so forth and so on for a while, plus they all have stellar names, which made it more FUN . . .

And to be as clear as possible, I have no idea what a "boson" or a "Higgs boson" actually might be, but the pattern suggests there are many of them . . .

Hint: "photos" are made with visible wavelength light...

Most wavelengths of light would pass right by the atom without interacting with it, but the team found an incredibly specific wavelength that would be absorbed by ytterbium

I don't know. ;-p

Damn interesting stuff. As nwtmike asks "What does this say about the Heisenberg Uncertaintity Principle?" I gratefully ask the question for those out there with the knowledge to please explain how a single atom can be isolated or suspended in an electrical field? I would assume that ytterbium is not a conductor of electricity. Thank you to whomever can answer that for me.

I think you use the E-field in a similar fashion that you'd
use a magnet suspending the particles in a line of a flux.

I know if you put grass seeds in oil and hold a transformer
or an electrical circuit over it the seeds will line up in the lines of flux.
At least I seem to remember doing something similar when I was younger.

I could however be completely wrong though, and how they isolated the single atom, placed it in proper location, and then got the other parameters right probably involved a lot of math and some trial and error.

That's like, 4 questions

I lost count...
MY BAD!

I lost count...
MY BAD!

Troll