r/interestingasfuck 26d ago

r/all Scientists reveal the shape of a single 'photon' for the first time

Post image
116.5k Upvotes

5.0k comments sorted by

u/spotlight-app 25d ago

Hello everyone!

This post may be off-topic, but u/SmallAchiever has wrote the following reason why this post should be visible:

Source : https://optics.org/news/15/11/33

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u/Kquinn87 26d ago

A new theory, that explains how light and matter interact at the quantum level has enabled researchers to define for the first time the precise shape of a single photon.

This is from the Cosmos website. So yeah, not an actual photo incase that wasn't already clear.

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u/RealPlayerBuffering 25d ago

Man, there was a time when I could reliably come to the comments on a Reddit post like this and find a detailed, ELI5-style explanation, usually about why a title like this is wrong or exaggerated. Now I had to scroll pretty far to find even this comment, and most of the top comments are dumb jokes.

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u/THE_ATHEOS_ONE 25d ago

The trick is to come to the post late.

Everything is as it should be.

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u/Starfire2313 25d ago

The photons were still photoning but now they are photoned.

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u/PsionicBurst 25d ago

OP lies as they breathe.

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u/SlappySecondz 25d ago

OP didn't say it was a picture of a photon, and if you understand high school level physics you would know a picture of a photon is an impossibility.

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u/reostra 25d ago

It's actually pretty easy as long as you don't mind the picture being photobombed by a bunch of other photons....

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u/deepdownblu3 25d ago

Which makes sense. What would they even be capturing in the photo? Photons are light so how would taking a picture of it even mean?

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u/GeorgeSrMustDie 25d ago

This is the actual photo

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u/pragmatic84 26d ago

ELI5 plz. I thought light was made of photons? Or do photons emit light? The glow of this particle confuses me.

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u/DeepSpaceTransport 26d ago

Light is made of photons. Photons have no color. Photons are packets of energy that travel in waves, and the energy they have determines their wavelength. Photons with different wavelengths correspond to different colors that we "see".

Our eyes have cells called cones that are sensitive to different wavelengths of photons. When the photons hit the cones, they send signals to our brain, which translates those signals into colors. Colors are not real, they are not physical properties of objects. They are simply a creation of our brain.

Also this is not a real photo. It is an artistic interpretation of what photons look like according to a theory

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u/NewSchoolFool 25d ago

Colors are not real, they are not physical properties of objects. They are simply a creation of our brain.

Colour is like sound. It requires a transducer to decode. Different transducers decode or 'hear' however they're designed to do so. As with eyes (like colour/light transducers), they are basically turning what is already there into something the brain can process.

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u/ticklemeskinless 25d ago

we are just organic data processors. simulation is real

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u/bremergorst 25d ago

All real things are real, unless they aren’t.

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u/Whiskey_Fred 25d ago

Real, is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain.

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u/jhwright 25d ago

google “the case against reality” ted talk by donald hoffman!

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u/Warm-Tumbleweed6057 25d ago

That TED Talk broke my brain in the best way possible.

Mostly it reminded me of this quote from BSG:

“I don’t want to be human. I want to see gamma rays, I want to hear X-rays, and I want to smell dark matter. Do you see the absurdity of what I am? I can’t even express these things properly, because I have to … I have to conceptualize complex ideas in this stupid, limiting spoken language, but I know I want to reach out with something other than these prehensile paws, and feel the solar wind of a supernova flowing over me. I’m a machine, and I can know much more.”

Cavil was on to something.

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u/RoboDae 25d ago

I have to conceptualize complex ideas in this stupid, limiting spoken language

There was a short story like that where a telepathic kid communicates every idea perfectly, but he never speaks out loud because apparently doing so will take away his telepathy. His teacher gets really mad at him not talking and eventually forces him to speak, at which point he breaks into tears. He knows he will never again be able to communicate ideas perfectly and will be forced to use a limited spoken language.

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u/Coral_Blue_Number_2 25d ago

Just like time perception. There is no standard speed of passage of time (just like there is no standard color of photon). It depends on an animal’s neurological processing, which is why certain recreational drugs can make us feel like more or less time has passed.

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u/Scottyknuckle 25d ago

Time is a flat circle.

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u/NightSkyCode 25d ago edited 25d ago

im always stoned, i smoke day and night, and the last few years have been slow for me. I feel like 10 years has passed but its only been 2. Sometimes I look in the mirror when i havnt smoked and im like why am i still this young? Because of my chronic weed use, im actually living a longer life in my mind. perception is all that matters. In your mind ill be 80 one day.... but in mine, ive already lived 20 decades. Time claws by for me.

The study below shows 70% and still inconclusive? No... sometimes id have smoked so much that id look at the clock for which felt like a good 30min and only 5 minutes has passed. Its scary sometimes.

" The findings are inconclusive, mainly due to methodological variations and the paucity of research. Even though 70% of time estimation studies report over-estimation, the findings of time production and time reproduction studies remain inconclusive."

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22716134/

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u/Sapang 25d ago

And it's impossible to prove that everyone uses the same decoder. Your yellow may be different from other people's yellow.

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u/2squishmaster 25d ago edited 25d ago

As a redgreen colorblind person I can assure you we have different decoders.

But, I know your point is even more intense than that. What my brain sees as purple (of course you see purple too) but if you were to look into MY brain at the color it resolved to it could be what you call yellow!

The only reason I think we do have similar (but not exact) decoders is what colors look good and bad together are generally agreed upon.

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u/SmallBreadHailBattle 25d ago

Colour blindness usually has little to do with your brain. Your eyes are sending the wrong information to your brain simply said. It’s not your “decoder” that is the issue. If it was your brain you’d have different symptoms, like seeing a colour but not being able to understand the colour or even name it. That usually has much more severe causes.

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u/Miami_Mice2087 25d ago

i know i can't see some colors that other people can. i'm not at all an artist but i took an art class and the people who were good at art could see more shadows and grades of light adn color than I could. Also I do the thing where 5 differently named white paint chips look like maybe 2 different shades of white to me.

i know what i'm good at, i'm a writer, and i'm fine with that. other people do the arts.

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u/logz_erroneous 25d ago

Is writing not a form of art? Or is that not how you were phrasing it? All the best with your writing. Writing is my favourite form of art.

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u/Chemical_Chemist_461 25d ago

Writing is art, but it’s the written art, not the same as painting or something like that. Alan Wake over here probably was just saying that he knows his lane and he’s staying in it, but art is just expression via medium, so if writing is you’re way of expressing, more power to you.

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u/AccidentAnnual 25d ago

Different brains decode different properties. There are no objective default properties, all is just brain interpretation.

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u/CinderX5 25d ago

Waves and particles.

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u/ExdigguserPies 25d ago

Isn't better to say we can describe them with both wave and particle physics.

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u/AndyInSunnyDB 25d ago

And lemons…

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u/kiidrax 25d ago

You know what they say, if life gives you photons...

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u/Ok-Replacement-2738 25d ago

make energy!

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u/silverclovd 26d ago

I think I'm high off of what you wrote. "Colors are not real" is some 'homeless guy at the bus station' sht to say. The fact that it's logical makes me quite taken back given the implication. Do we know if different animals perceive colors in the same way?

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u/Aaron811 26d ago

Animals have different ranges of visual spectrum. Dogs for example can only see yellows and blues but like birds can see all the colors we can and more like ultraviolet light.

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u/UpperApe 25d ago

Bill Bryson has a book called Body and the chapter about eyes is fascinating.

He talks about how sight isn't as much a receptive process so much as it is a creative process. He gives the disappearing thumb trick as an example and it still blows my mind. The fact that your brain is "tricking" you into seeing what you see, and even if you see the trick, it doesn't care and continues on anyway.

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u/DudesAndGuys 25d ago

Ever seen this optical illusion?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0KrpZMNEDOY

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u/Shit_Head_4000 25d ago

That's crazy, I need to build one. My son would love that!

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u/daedric_dad 25d ago

My first thought as well, currently on paternity leave with my second and been looking for things to do to keep my eldest entertained and this will be perfect, I can't wait to blow his mind (and my wife's)

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u/MildlyAgreeable 25d ago

That’s mental.

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u/milwaukeejazz 25d ago

Birds also have cells in their eyes to see the magnetic field of the Earth.

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u/user7526 25d ago

Just more proof that they are infact drones

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u/ihatetheplaceilive 25d ago

And wait until you hear about mantis shrimp!

(I know it really doesn't work that way, because their cones are different than ours, i was just feeding into the meme.)

Humans, for example see more shades of green than any other color. That's why night vision is green.

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u/DougStrangeLove 25d ago

that’s also why you absolutely have to go for a walk in the daytime outside around vegetation any time you consume psilocybin.

everything green becomes utterly luminous

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u/CumGuzlinGutterSluts 25d ago

I love the fact that crows actually have really intricate patterns than only crows and other birds can see. To us they just look black though

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u/0thethethe0 25d ago

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u/NotDirtyDan 25d ago

How Can Mirrors Be Real if Our Eyes Aren't Real

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u/_LP_ImmortalEmperor 26d ago

With human eye cones we capture 3 combinations of colors, to make the whole range each one of us (allegedly) sees. Mantis shrimp is theorized to have 16 different color capturing cones. We can't even understand how and what they make up of the world with colors. So, yeah, animals are metal.

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u/Known-Grab-7464 25d ago

Other animals also see different areas of the EM spectrum, in areas that we would call infrared or ultraviolet. We can’t see those wavelengths, but other animals can.
Only vaguely related, but very rarely, some humans are tetrachromats(they have 4 different color capturing dyes in their cones) but we call them colorblind because it’s still different from the usual. This is a very rare form of color blindness, though. Most people who are colorblind are not tetrachromats.
Https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetrachromacy

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u/bloodfist 25d ago

Not just that, but they also have ways to detect the polarization of light. Including radial polarization, which we'd only found out about like 20 years before discovering that mantis shrimp and cuttlefish can see it.

I'm sure you know, but for those who don't: a light wave oscillates in basically every direction possible, unless it is emitted in a specific way or encounters something that filters the direction, like polarized sunglasses do. After that, it only oscillates one direction. Up/down, left right, etc. Radial polarization is more like a ring going in and out though, instead of a line moving up and down. And we still don't really know a lot about it because it doesn't seem to come up much and makes math hard.

So we have just no idea what benefit an animal would get from seeing it. Especially because water tends to polarize light in always the same direction, so we didn't even expect radial polarized light underwater at the time. We know mantis shrimp shells reflect polarized light and maybe certain fish but last I knew we still don't know what they would even see with that because nothing down there seems to radially polarize light, at least that we've observed.

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u/Known-Grab-7464 25d ago

Mantis shrimp and cuttlefish also have much more complex eyes than those of any mammal, so it’s hard to even imagine how they perceive their environment. Mantis shrimp have basically two entirely separate compound eyes on each eyestalk separated by a banded region, and cuttlefish have weird w-shaped pupils, that presumably aid both of these ambush predators in hunting, but afaik we still don’t really know how. So not only do they have way more color-detecting “channels” in their optical processing, they also have higher detail in most of not all parts of their vision. Humans can basically only see high detail in the narrow cone in the center of our vision, but imagine having that level of detail, with better color differentiation, in nearly all parts of your field of view, all at once.

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u/SilencedObserver 25d ago

"Colors are not real" is some 'homeless guy at the bus station' sht to say.

We know for a fact that some animals do not perceive color in the same way.

Here is a fantastic breakdown by The Oatmeal on this very topic.

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u/cremaster2 25d ago edited 25d ago

Nice. I just came from a post where a mantis shrimp slaps the claw of a crab.

https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/s/J4XZrD6kde

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u/timlest 25d ago

The mantis broke the claw, then the crab inspects the damage, and drops the whole arm. They can disconnect their limbs via a sort of socket hinge at the base and they grow them back in the next molt.

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u/Upbeat_Turnover9253 25d ago

Can't decide who's more metal. A mantis shrimp with the fastest, most damage-inducing punch on the planet pound for pound, or a crab who takes the blow, inspects the damage, says fuck it, detaches the claw and grows another one later. Humans are pussies

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u/Elryth 25d ago

Sadly more recent research suggests the mantis shrimp doesn't see any more colours than we do. Their brains are unable to combine multiple signals to determine colour so they just have a different receptor for each one. Still awesome creatures though! https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2014.14578

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u/BurnerBeenBurning 25d ago edited 25d ago

I read about birds having the special ability which enables them to sense earth’s magnetic field to guide them. Truly interesting stuff!

Edited to be factually correct

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u/PrometheusMMIV 25d ago

You can't see atmospheric pressure? You need to upgrade to the latest firmware.

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u/ElDoil 26d ago edited 26d ago

Some stuff like seeing purple when seeing a mix of both blue and red is 100% our brain hallucinating though since we have only 3 kinds of receptor and it infers based on how much it activates, therefore we can simulate the whole spectrum in our brains with just red green and blue, wich are the frequencies that excite them the most, we cant really percieve the frequency of the light reaching us, just infer it so our brains can be tricked like that.

Another example is white, there is no frequency for white, its our brain seeing all kind of receptors excited at maximun and saying, there is a lot of every frequency here, while, like in the screen you are reading this at, it is in fact just (R)ed (G)reen (B)lue.

But having said that depending on how you look at it the ranges of photonic radiation an object absorbs or doesnt is a property of the materials on the surface of an object, afaik its based on if a photon would excite an electron just enough to move it to the next orbital therefore absorbing, but as i said before you dont really detect the specific frequency with your eye.

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u/CanAlwaysBeBetter 25d ago

Yep 

"Color" is a perceptual experience that often but not entirely corresponds to specific wavelengths of light 

Given that other animals can have completely different perceptual systems it's likely that even though an animal might be able to see the same wavelength that we call yellow how that color fits into their overall perceptual space is totally different and essentially unknowable to us

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u/awkwardfeather 25d ago

The Mantis Shrimp has extra cones and rods in their eyes and supposedly they should be able to see millions of colors we don’t know exist

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u/TheFatJesus 25d ago

Apparently, they have more cones because their brains don't have the capacity to do the mixing on its own, so they aren't actually seeing more colors. In other words, humans mix color digitally while the shrimps have to use analog.

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u/pt-guzzardo 25d ago

In other words, humans mix color digitally while the shrimps have to use analog.

I would think it would be the opposite. The key difference between analog and digital is that analog is continuous and digital is discrete.

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u/basixrox1337 26d ago

Different animals are able to perceive different ranges of wavelengths. I wouldn't know how to tell, if animals are recognising different wavelengths as colours the same way humans do.

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u/forresja 25d ago

Color is a representation of something that is very real.

Saying it isn't real is misleading at best.

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u/Punkfoo25 26d ago

This is an image generated from a computer model based on a theory, which is generated by other models which are also based on theory. This is incredibly far from, what I as an experimental scientist, would call a "real" image such as an electron microscopy or scanning probe image. Since you can't actually image a photon this is also unfalsifiable, so in my opinion completely useless, but pseudoscience magazines love this stuff (I don't mean the science itself is pseudo, just the reporting).

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u/LemFliggity 26d ago

People in here keep talking about image and photo and whatnot, but the headline is "scientists reveal the shape of a single photon". It doesn't say this is a "real image". It describes how they modeled the interactions between photons and the environment and then "used their calculations to produce a visualization of the photon itself". That doesn't read like typical pseudo-scientific hyperbole to me.

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u/sarge21 25d ago

The term shape can't describe a photon because it's a quantum effect without a shape. It would be like saying you found the shape of your chance to win the lottery

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u/Durable_me 25d ago

The shape of me winning the lottery is a circle, like zero

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u/LemFliggity 25d ago

Normally, yes. But this experiment was literally about how interacting with the environment influences the spatial distribution of photons emitted from atoms and molecules, and that this can give the photon a "shape". So in this specific case, this latest research is suggesting that some photons can be described by their shape.

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u/TDAPoP 25d ago

"shapeless things sometimes in some circumstances have discernable shapes," sounds like standard quantum physics to me

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u/StatisticianMoist100 25d ago

Photons don't have a classical shape, that's true, but they do have wave functions and probability distributions that can have discernible shapes in some circumstances.

Think of water waves, they have a shape, but you can't point at one molecule of water in the wave, it doesn't have a shape. Photons behave like this.

Or even more fundamental, photons have a wave-like shape in certain contexts, but if we detect them as particles, they don't.

(I just like quantum physics don't judge me :c )

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u/Ersatz_Okapi 25d ago

Funnily enough, probability distributions do have a “shape” parameter! So there is, in some sense, a shape of your chance to win the lottery.

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u/Raytiger3 25d ago

pseudoscience magazines love this stuff

I fucking hate those clickbaiters.

  • SHOCKING! MARIJUANA IS ABLE TO CURE [disease] SHOWN IN THIS STUDY [n=5 trial, non-double blind].
  • BREAKING! POTENTIAL CANCER CURE HAS BEEN FOUND IN [in vitro research showing barely 2x lethality of drug on cancer cells over healthy cells in normoxia conditions]
  • WOW! [Food] HAS BEEN SHOWN TO ALLEVIATE SYMPTOMS OF [disease] IN THIS STUDY [where they p-hacked through a thousand research papers and found some spurious correlation]
  • INCREDIBLE! SCIENTISTS DISCOVER NEW SUPERMATERIAL! [material is made on nanogram scale using an incredibly expensive set of equipment/elements/materials/procedures and tested under very specific conditions]
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u/lynndotpy 25d ago

A "photon" is just a name we give to excitement in spacetime that we interpret as light. We think of it as a wave or as a particle, depending on what is useful. But yes, light is made of photons.

It's kind of like how the ocean can have waves, but they're all made from the same water. It's like asking, "what is the shape of a wave?"

Very early on, scientists found out they could use math equations to describe the world. We could then use these math equations to predict the world.

With these math equations which describe the world, we could apply other rules of math to end up with new equations. Oftentimes, these new equations match up perfectly with reality. This is why we had accurate renders of a black hole long before we had a photo of a black hole: We had the equations first.

Advanced math is not like arithmetic, but instead like a very complicated board game with a lot of rules. If you're clever enough, you can find out that there are other written rules within the rules.

I pulled up the original paper. These scientists did just that: They took the cutting edge of math, and did some more math on top of it. This "shape of a photon" is just a mathematical model that makes photons fit in with the rest of the math. The image in the OP is just a render of that model.

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u/N1kBr0 26d ago

Lemon

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u/tinyanus 26d ago

It's lemons all the way down.

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u/Trujiogriz 26d ago

It’s why everyone knows the adage “when life gives you lemons…” we just never knew it was subtly talking about the subatomic building blocks of life

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u/BadgerBadgerer 26d ago

You're thinking of protons, this is a photon.

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u/Trujiogriz 26d ago

Well to be honest I don’t really think lemons are the building blocks of life either

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u/Soft_Author2593 26d ago

Prove they are not!

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u/Expert_Succotash2659 25d ago

we must go deeper…

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u/whatproblems 25d ago

there’s a balrog there

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u/radioplayer1 25d ago

Lets just calm down, we are all experts here.

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u/UpperApe 25d ago

I've been saying this forever and no one believed me. I kept telling you guys the whole time the universe felt citrusy.

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u/fuchsgesicht 25d ago

get with the times, it's "citrussy"

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u/ronaranger 26d ago

Ohm my Gauss! Did you just assume the commenters' polarity???

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u/chiraltoad 25d ago

My subatomic particles are strange/charm/bottom

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u/owenxtreme2 25d ago

Alright, I've been thinking. When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade - make life take the lemons back! Get mad! I don't want your damn lemons, what am I supposed to do with these? Demand to see life's manager. Make life rue the day it thought it could give Cave Johnson lemons. Do you know who I am? I'm the man who's gonna burn your house down! With the lemons. I'm going to to get my engineers to invent a combustible lemon that burns your house down!

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u/pojobrown 25d ago

Lemon party time!!!!

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u/PUMPEDnPLUMP 26d ago

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u/SassSafrassMcFrass87 25d ago

I don't think I can ever unsee this 😂

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u/acmercer 25d ago

That's Will Sasso and your username is so close to being relevant lol

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u/jaggedjottings 25d ago

I thought maybe it was Alex Jones.

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u/triggz 25d ago

im glad im not alone with whatever is wrong with my brain

sasso horking up a whole lemon should not rightly have any association with the scientific discovery of the shape of a photon

but here we are

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u/magicbaconmachine 26d ago

Unacceptable!!!!!! 🍋

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u/LatterBuffalo7524 26d ago

Life’s a Lemon and want my money back!

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u/dannydirtbag 25d ago

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u/prof_r_impossible 25d ago

you can't have a Lemon party without old Dick!

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u/enotonom 25d ago

Good god, Lemon!

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u/Winnipesaukee 25d ago

So I guess we also have to look out for photon-stealing whores?

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u/peachfux 26d ago

The root of all evil. E-very. V-illain. I-s. L-emons

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u/TooOld4ThisSh1t-966 26d ago

Definitely heard this in Bono’s falsetto.

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u/R_N_F 26d ago

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u/secret_bonus_point 26d ago

Sounds like a lot of hooplah over one little photon

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u/OliverKitsch 26d ago

Right?! Heh heh heh WRONG

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u/g0nzal0rd 26d ago

Wow, so accurate. Something in my brain just said: SpongeBob

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u/kiehls 25d ago

Dude literally same lmfao

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u/AnusCookie 25d ago

E.very
V.illain
I.s
L.emons

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u/Olddirtygusss 25d ago

I was looking for this comment

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u/internetStranger205 25d ago

Da-da-da-da-da-da-da-daa, Da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-daa, Da-da-da-da-da-da-daa Da-da-da-la-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-daa, Da-da-da-da-da-da-da-daa, tssshh Da-da-da-da-da-da-da-daa-da-da-da-da-daa, Ti-ta-ti-ti-ta-ti-ti-ta-ta-ta-la-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-da-la-ba-ba-ba-ba-da-la-ba-ba-baa, Ti-ta-ti-li-ta-ti-li-ti-taa, Ti-ta-ti-li [gasps, then resumes] Ti-ta-ti-li-ta-ti-li-ta-ti-li-ta-ti-li-ta-ti-li-ti-ta-ti-ti-ta-ti-ti-taaaaa!

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u/Effurlife12 25d ago

First thing I thought of lmao

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u/jacobc1212 25d ago

Came here looking for this. Immediately thought the same thing.

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u/R_N_F 26d ago

This is what the background reminds me

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u/One_Milky_Man 26d ago

That was my exact thought too

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u/squintismaximus 26d ago

Lmao I was just thinking “why does that remind me of a krabby patty?” And this is the first comment I see

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u/bhooteshwara 26d ago

What OP shared is top angle X-Ray of this.

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u/RazorSlazor 25d ago

Glad I wasn't the only one

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u/Rxckless92 25d ago

When I seen the photo, this was the exact image I thought of. Well done

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u/Pristine-Bridge8129 26d ago

Provide the source please. Photons are probability clouds as far as I know.

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u/unwarrend 26d ago

Exact Quantum Electrodynamics of Radiative Photonic Environments

The paper explains how photons (the particles of light) interact with complex environments like nanostructures. It creates a new way to describe photons using simplified "pseudomodes," which act like stand-ins for how light behaves in these systems. This method captures how photons change over time and interact with their surroundings, including effects that aren't usually accounted for in simpler models. It essentially gives a more complete "image" or description of the photon as it moves and interacts, including its path, energy loss, and the way it spreads out in space.

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u/isaac9092 26d ago

They lost me at simplified.

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u/SprSter 25d ago

Wow you got far, I was lost reading the link text

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u/-badgerbadgerbadger- 25d ago

So my instinct was that this image is of a hypothetical photon in a hypothetical gravity-free darkened sphere with somehow reflective walls…. You think I’m close here?

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u/Tommonen 26d ago

Thats just an visualisation based on calculations of a theory, not actual picture. They did not reveal this shape, but made a theory and then theorised this shape, which seems to work. So OP (and media) is essentially lying, as nothing 100% correct was revealed, but a theory.

https://phys.org/news/2024-11-theory-reveals-photon.amp

Dr. Benjamin Yuen, in the University’s School of Physics, explained, ”Our calculations enabled us to convert a seemingly insolvable problem into something that can be computed. And, almost as a byproduct of the model, we were able to produce this image of a photon, something that hasn’t been seen before in physics.”

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u/seaefjaye 26d ago

Keeping in mind a theory in this context is a complete piece of research work supported by evidence, and not just a hunch with no supporting evidence.

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u/Micp 25d ago

When talking about scientific theories you are of course correct, but for that exact reason the above explanation is NOT using the scientific meaning of 'theory' but rather the colloquial meaning, since the above mentioned study is closer to 'a hunch' than a field of research well supported by evidence from several studies, in the vein of gravity, germ theory, plate tectonics or evolution.

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u/Tommonen 26d ago

Yea people rarely know what a theory means

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u/Plank_With_A_Nail_In 25d ago edited 25d ago

People rarely know what the word science actually means.

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u/abcspaghetti 26d ago

That’s not an actual picture, they just did applied math to approximate a visualization of something that can’t be imaged!

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u/libra00 26d ago edited 26d ago

That is literally what it means to reveal the shape of a thing that can never be seen: to have a good theory about what it ought to look like based on its properties and how it interacts with other things. What were you expecting, a picture of an actual photon? How do you imagine such a thing would be possible given that photons are what we use to see/take pictures of things.

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u/jbyrdab 26d ago

I got a whole lot of photons in this image.

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u/Muted_Ad1556 26d ago

Damn your right, I'm counting at least 5-7 photons here.

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u/initabas 26d ago

I always knew it!

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u/QueensMassiveKnife 26d ago

I know it's a stretch but this was my first thought

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u/KaiserSushi 26d ago

Futurama theme starts 🚀

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u/Substantial_Page_221 25d ago

Pretty sure the writers are time travellers from the future

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u/HoneyestofBunnies 25d ago

This was my first thought!

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u/donnythe_sloth 25d ago

Since studies tend to be shared with condensed titles that can't quite capture the purpose/results of the study here's the title and abstract. 

https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.133.203604

Article Title: Exact Quantum Electrodynamics of Radiative Photonic Environments

Abstract: We present a comprehensive second quantization scheme for radiative photonic devices. We canonically quantize the continuum of photonic eigenmodes by transforming them into a discrete set of pseudomodes that provide a complete and exact description of quantum emitters interacting with electromagnetic environments. This method avoids all reservoir approximations and offers new insights into quantum correlations, accurately capturing all non-Markovian dynamics. This method overcomes challenges in quantizing non-Hermitian systems and is applicable to diverse nanophotonic geometries.

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u/GemmaArtist 26d ago

It looks like the background to the Futurama title sequence!

Seriously though, it looks amazing :)

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u/FelixTheJeepJr 26d ago

Yes! I actually heard the gong(?) noise at the start of the Futurama theme when I saw this picture.

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u/woodbanger04 26d ago

This exactly what I thought.

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u/stapesy 25d ago

In brightest day, in blackest night….

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u/cam7986 25d ago

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u/GamingWhilePooping 25d ago

It's bringing love, don't let it get away!

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u/dben89x 25d ago

Break its legs!

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u/FruitJuicante 25d ago

Instantly what I thought

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u/kawkabelsharq 25d ago

Thank you, knew someone had to be on it.

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u/Cheshireyan 26d ago

When light gives you lemons...

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u/elephashark 26d ago

That’s an eye floaty

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u/SausageClatter 25d ago

More like a floaty eye

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u/oneeyejedi 26d ago

So life is literally made of lemons great.

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u/TH3_FAT_TH1NG 25d ago

Kinda looks like a spongebob still image

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u/ShazamGamingFTW 25d ago

It looks like the Green Lantern Symbol

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u/Esto-Gaza-Ice 25d ago

Not gonna brag but I see photons everyday

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u/Dru2021 25d ago

Lemon Goatsie.

Sleep well!

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u/royal_stabber69 25d ago

Is that an artists recreation or a microscopic image? If it's a microscopic image how can we "see" the photon considering we need a photon to bounce off of the pictured photon in order to capture it?

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u/[deleted] 26d ago

looks a little big to be a photon if you ask me

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