Are these actually real electrons?

[Rev. Cheeseman]

I'm curious whether the scientists actually show the real electron in this video.



Thoughts?

 

[sophiecentaur]

I'm curious whether the scientists actually show the real electron in this video.



Thoughts?

I think the method used to produced that picture needs to be explained. It's not a 'photograph'.

 

[Rev. Cheeseman]

I think the method used to produced that picture needs to be explained. It's not a 'photograph'.

According to the original post https://phys.org/news/2008-02-electron.html, it was captured by using an attosecond quantum stroboscope. Here is another photo of the experiment https://www.researchgate.net/figure/a-b-Principle-of-the-quantum-stroboscope-An-APT-ionises-the-target-atom-once-per_fig13_233480488.

Some said that was actually just an ionized helium atom.

 

[Rev. Cheeseman]

@Baluncore thoughts?

 

[sophiecentaur]

According to the original post https://phys.org/news/2008-02-electron.html, it was captured by using an attosecond quantum stroboscope. Here is another photo of the experiment https://www.researchgate.net/figure/a-b-Principle-of-the-quantum-stroboscope-An-APT-ionises-the-target-atom-once-per_fig13_233480488.

Some said that was actually just an ionized helium atom.

My point was that it was not an actual photo of what you would ‘see’. The image is a plot of its effect on something over some period of measurement time.
we should expect some details of the experiment first.

 

[Baluncore]

Baluncore thoughts?

I am sceptical.

 

[Rev. Cheeseman]

@Dale @hutchphd what do you think?

 

[Rev. Cheeseman]

You can see more details of the experiment here https://journals.aps.org/prl/pdf/10.1103/PhysRevLett.100.073003

 

[sophiecentaur]

You can see more details of the experiment here https://journals.aps.org/prl/pdf/10.1103/PhysRevLett.100.073003

It looks (as you'd expect it to) perfectly valid. There's a pattern, produced by a beam of electrons, interacting with IR radiation etc etc, (which I only vaguely understand) but the words used in the paper put it into context. That image is not a photograph of an event, any more than those red shaped images of observations of a black hole are actual photographs. Once again. Science Journalism presents pictures and a headline but misses out the important and really interesting bits in between.
I wonder how the salaries of the journalists and Scientists compare . . . . . .

 

[Rev. Cheeseman]

It looks (as you'd expect it to) perfectly valid. There's a pattern, produced by a beam of electrons, interacting with IR radiation etc etc, (which I only vaguely understand) but the words used in the paper put it into context. That image is not a photograph of an event, any more than those red shaped images of observations of a black hole are actual photographs. Once again. Science Journalism presents pictures and a headline but misses out the important and really interesting bits in between.
I wonder how the salaries of the journalists and Scientists compare . . . . . .

English isn't my first language so sorry if it bothers you if I ask too much questions. So, in conclusion, the objects in the paper are not electrons or what?

 

[f95toli]

English isn't my first language so sorry if it bothers you if I ask too much questions. So, in conclusion, the objects in the paper are not electrons or what?

That is almost a philosophical question. The movies does shows the effect of electrons interacting with a beam of light,.
You can of course not "see" electrons in the usual sense of the word since they are point-particles (they don't have a physical size), but that does not stop us from seeing the results of their interaction with something else
The same could be said of e.g STM images of atoms, but at some point the discussion becomes a bit pointless in my view,

 

[Rev. Cheeseman]

That is almost a philosophical question. The movies does shows the effect of electrons interacting with a beam of light,.
You can of course not "see" electrons in the usual sense of the word since they are point-particles (they don't have a physical size), but that does not stop us from seeing the results of their interaction with something else
The same could be said of e.g STM images of atoms, but at some point the discussion becomes a bit pointless in my view,

Ok so we can safely conclude that was just an indirect observation of electrons then. Just like any movies or images of atoms out there.

Point particles have no physical size, void or empty space devoid of anything also have no physical size, are they the same but with the difference being point particles have mass, charge, etc. while void doesn't have anything at all?

 

[sophiecentaur]

That is almost a philosophical question. The movies does shows the effect of electrons interacting with a beam of light,.

I agree about the philosophical aspect. However, the movie doesn't show 'an electron'. It shows the effect of a large number of electrons when influenced and scattered by an IR beam. It is no more an electron than the concentric rings created when a beam of electrons is scattered. See this school electron diffraction demo or even the result of many photons passing through Young's Slits.
The experiment described in the link is, of course, more complicated than that but the 'stroboscopic' way of observing many identical ionisation events, allows an image to be built up which shows details of the momentum distribution. You could reasonably say it is an image of contributions of many electrons.

 

[f95toli]

Ok so we can safely conclude that was just an indirect observation of electrons then. Just like any movies or images of atoms out there.

Sure, but all images of things smaller than the wavelength of visible light are "indirect". It could argued that e.g. the SEM image of the transistors in a Intel CPU are "indirect" since these components are too small to seen in an optical microscope; but I doubt most people would think of "the nature" a transistor as being qualitatively different from any other everyday object.
Now, electrons ARE different from transistors in that they don't have any physical size; but that does not mean that there is an fundamental difference between images of these objects.

Point particles have no physical size, void or empty space devoid of anything also have no physical size, are they the same but with the difference being point particles have mass, charge, etc. while void doesn't have anything at all?

Sort of, electrons are still physical "objects" in that they have a mass, charge, spin etc; they just don't have any physical size.

 

[sophiecentaur]

Sure, but all images of things smaller than the wavelength of visible light are "indirect". It could argued that e.g. the SEM image of the transistors in a Intel CPU are "indirect" since these components are too small to seen in an optical microscope;

There is a distinct difference between the image of a 'single' object - as in a single element in a solid state circuit and a composite image, using many separate elements, to imply the structure or behaviour of a 'typical' object. No one (?) would say that the fringe pattern from Young's Slits is in any way an image of 'a photon'. A single photon can trigger a detector, placed somewhere on the Young's Slit screen but there's no detail of its spatial distribution because that's totally undefined.
I always challenge this stuff because the media will present a sexy picture and imply all sorts of nonsense about that the picture actually means. Caveat lector, as they (used to) say.

 

[Prishon]

Ok so we can safely conclude that was just an indirect observation of electrons then. Just like any movies or images of atoms out there.

Point particles have no physical size, void or empty space devoid of anything also have no physical size, are they the same but with the difference being point particles have mass, charge, etc. while void doesn't have anything at all?

Empty space has no physical size?

 

[Rev. Cheeseman]

Empty space has no physical size?

I mean the void outside the finite but unbounded universe that is well known in Big Bang theory.

 

[weirdoguy]

I mean the void outside the finite but unbounded universe that is well known in Big Bang theory.

This is word salad without meaning as you've ALREADY been told. This thread is going nowhere...

 

[Rev. Cheeseman]

This is word salad without meaning as you've ALREADY been told. This thread is going nowhere...

It had been answered that what is in the experiments are not direct pictures of individual electrons but are just motion of the electrons. I was just simply responding to @Prishon 's response to my statement.

But isn't it true that the void outside the finite but unbounded universe have no physical boundaries?

 

[PeterDonis]

I mean the void outside the finite but unbounded universe that is well known in Big Bang theory.

There is no such thing.

isn't it true that the void outside the finite but unbounded universe have no physical boundaries?

The question is meaningless since there is no such thing as "the void outside the finite but unbounded universe".

In fact, according to our best current model of the universe, our universe is spatially infinite, and at least to the future, it is also infinite in time.

 

[PeterDonis]

I think The universe expanded inflationary on the Planck-sized mouth of a cut-open (on the outside and thereby able to stretch to infinity) 4D torus.

I have no idea where you are getting this from. Do you have a reference or are you just making it up? Please be aware that personal theories and personal speculations are off limits here at PF.

 

[PeterDonis]

Im not allowed to talk about this. It is written just to me.

Then we can't discuss it here. You need to give a reference to an actual peer-reviewed paper. If there isn't one, then as far as PF is concerned it's personal speculation and off limits.

 

[PeterDonis]

The original question of the thread has been answered and it is going way off topic. Thread closed.