Without light, there is no photography and one of the most interesting aspects of light is how it acts as both a particle and a wave. It was one of Albert Einstein’s great insights.

While scientists have confirmed the dual nature of light in the laboratory, they haven’t been able to observe both behaviors at the same time until just recently. A team of Swiss and American scientist recently took a “photograph” of the dual behavior of light. See Simultaneous Observation of the Quantization and the Interference Pattern of a Plasmonic Near-Field published in the journal Nature Communications. The article isn’t an easy read; I was lost half way through the first paragraph. For a more understandable explanation, see the articles on Discovery and the one on the website of Ecole polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne, the university at which the photograph was taken.

For photographers, this is a twofer. One, we learn a little more about light and, two, we get to see light and its dual nature in a first-ever photograph.

 

03 Mar This entry was written by bjzwit and published on March 3, 2015 at 2:44 pm. It’s filed under Inspiration and tagged light, science. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.