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LiveScience
LiveScience
Ben Turner

Stunning image shows atoms transforming into quantum waves — just as Schrödinger predicted

Erwin Schrödinger lithium
The image shows the white dots of Lithium atoms cooled to near absolute zero. The red smudges around them represent their wave packets.

For the first time ever, physicists have captured a clear image of individual atoms behaving like a wave.

The image shows sharp red dots of fluorescing atoms transforming into fuzzy blobs of wave packets and is a stunning demonstration of the idea that atoms exist as both particles and waves — one of the cornerstones of quantum mechanics. 

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