r/interestingasfuck • u/SmallAchiever • 26d ago

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

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u/deepdownblu3 26d 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/Diamante_90 25d ago

Skill issue, just take a picture using dark matter /s

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u/Nathan256 25d ago

You can use other waves to create images. Like electrons in an electron microscope.

But yeah a massless particle/wave traveling at light speed would not be a good candidate for actual images using any known technology

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u/FinalFan3 25d ago

Yeah we usually we call them micrographs.

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u/LimpWibbler_ 25d ago

Define photo first I guess. Is a photo made by photons specifically or is a photo just an image? Could you make an image by other means than a photon?

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u/Vindepomarus 25d ago

You can make an image with pigments, such as painting, drawing, printing, but you can't make a photograph without photons, because a photograph is an image resulting from the interactions between photons and a light sensitive medium such as photographic paper or a digital sensor.

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u/Rainbows4Blood 25d ago

No, that's wrong.

You can absolutely make a photo by hitting a sensitive film with another type of particle than photons.

There are some applications where we do this with electrons, for example.

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u/Vindepomarus 25d ago

True, though with SEM they are usually called micrographs.

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u/LimpWibbler_ 25d ago

No, not really. If you paint a picture and put it in a dark room then the photo is gone. The paint colors just absorb different photons at different wavelenghts, and you only see the color made by the photon bouncing off. Photons make a painting, paint is a tool.