{"id":213541,"date":"2025-05-08T05:08:40","date_gmt":"2025-05-08T10:08:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/05\/physicists-capture-first-ever-images-of-free-range-atoms"},"modified":"2025-05-08T05:08:40","modified_gmt":"2025-05-08T10:08:40","slug":"physicists-capture-first-ever-images-of-free-range-atoms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/05\/physicists-capture-first-ever-images-of-free-range-atoms","title":{"rendered":"Physicists Capture First-Ever Images of Free-Range Atoms"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/physicists-capture-first-ever-images-of-free-range-atoms.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Free-range atoms, roaming around without restrictions, have been captured on camera for the first time \u2013 enabling physicists to take a closer look at <a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1038\/nature05513\">long predicted<\/a> quantum phenomena.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s a bit like snapping a shot of a rare bird in your back garden, after a long time of only ever hearing reports of them in the area, and seeing the food in your bird feeder diminish each day. Instead of birdwatching, though, we\u2019re talking about <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencealert.com\/physicists-design-a-way-to-detect-quantum-behavior-in-large-objects-like-us\">quantum physics<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The US researchers behind the breakthrough carefully constructed an \u201catom-resolved microscopy\u201d camera system that first puts atoms in a contained cloud, where they roam freely. Then, laser light freezes the atoms in position to record them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Free-range atoms, roaming around without restrictions, have been captured on camera for the first time \u2013 enabling physicists to take a closer look at long predicted quantum phenomena. It\u2019s a bit like snapping a shot of a rare bird in your back garden, after a long time of only ever hearing reports of them in [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1506,48,1617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-213541","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-food","category-particle-physics","category-quantum-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213541","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=213541"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213541\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=213541"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=213541"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=213541"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}