I feel like I’m looking at portals, but no — this is the first photograph ever of a single atom’s shadow.
It was captured by researchers at Griffith University’s Centre for Quantum Dynamics in Australia, using a “super high-resolution microscope” that renders the atom’s shadow just dark enough to be picked up by a digital camera.
According to the Daily Mail, no other facility has a microscope powerful enough to take this image. It is, and quite possibly shall remain, the “smallest shadow ever photographed.”
What’s the point? This breakthrough might, in the future, assist with biological imaging and, according to researchers, may even “be useful for quantum computing.”
