The First Ever Photograph Of Light As Both A Particle And Wave

*reads article*

Yeah, they didn't take a "snap shot" of light as a particle and a wave at the same time. Making light vibrate a wire into a standing wave is a fairly large stretch to say you're picturing the wave. If anything you're picturing the super position of many light waves all at once indirectly. Then saying they bounced an electron beam off the wire means they're photographing the particle nature of light? nuh uh.
 
sfsuphysics said:
*reads article*

Yeah, they didn't take a "snap shot" of light as a particle and a wave at the same time. Making light vibrate a wire into a standing wave is a fairly large stretch to say you're picturing the wave. If anything you're picturing the super position of many light waves all at once indirectly. Then saying they bounced an electron beam off the wire means they're photographing the particle nature of light? nuh uh.
Click to expand...

Boy am I glad I'm not the only one that came to this conclusion. That would have been embarrassing.
 
sfsuphysics said:
*reads article*

Yeah, they didn't take a "snap shot" of light as a particle and a wave at the same time. Making light vibrate a wire into a standing wave is a fairly large stretch to say you're picturing the wave. If anything you're picturing the super position of many light waves all at once indirectly. Then saying they bounced an electron beam off the wire means they're photographing the particle nature of light? nuh uh.
Click to expand...

That's how e-beam scanning works- SEM, TEM etc rely on this and electron-photon interactions are well known.
 
sfsuphysics said:
*reads article*

Yeah, they didn't take a "snap shot" of light as a particle and a wave at the same time. Making light vibrate a wire into a standing wave is a fairly large stretch to say you're picturing the wave. If anything you're picturing the super position of many light waves all at once indirectly. Then saying they bounced an electron beam off the wire means they're photographing the particle nature of light? nuh uh.
Click to expand...

Well, it says they shot the electron beam close to the nanowire and essentially observed the energy exchange between the electrons and photons. They are saying that since they observed the standing wave AND a photon-electron interaction "simultaneously" it somehow qualifies as an image of both. It's an ass-backwards way of thinking about it and I'm not sure this would quite qualify. It seems that they are still observing the two separately.
 
sfsuphysics said:
*reads article*

Yeah, they didn't take a "snap shot" of light as a particle and a wave at the same time. Making light vibrate a wire into a standing wave is a fairly large stretch to say you're picturing the wave. If anything you're picturing the super position of many light waves all at once indirectly. Then saying they bounced an electron beam off the wire means they're photographing the particle nature of light? nuh uh.
Click to expand...

I think "rendering" a picture would be a far more accurate way to present this to the news. The Super Position makes observation of a state of duality impossible by any known methods. We only know after the fact.

Its still an accomplishment but so many of these announcements deserve a greater PR filter.
 
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