re: Oxford student uses ordinary camera to capture atom in prize-winning photograph

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So not a picture of an atom, just a picture of light reflecting from an atom.

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Light emitted from the atom

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So thinking this through, isn’t it technically fair to say that this picture is just as “real” as a picture of a star in the night sky?

Granted, stars are self-luminous so that’s a difference. But when we take pictures of stars (and presumably when we view them with the naked eye) they appear much larger than they actually are due to diffraction. I would think the same thing is happening here.

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My point was to explain to the "bullshite" people that the image produced is not the same as a reflected light picture which is what we normally think of as a picture for most objects. I assume their reasoning was the atom is too small which is accurate for any "ordinary camera". What the camera is doing is recording the photons released when the electrons drop down an energy level. The picture of a star is just recording the photons released by the star, I would argue semantically it is not a picture of a star. My point is this picture can certainly be real but it isn't a picture of an atom like we generally think of a picture of a ball bearing etc. Casually I think it is fine to call it a picture of an atom but that can cause either contrarian or people that don't understand exactly what is going on to take issue with the "picture".

The picture is cool, very cool and likely real.

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Mr. Nadlinger

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