atom's shadow

[Copernicus]

The following article, http://phys.org/news/2012-07-photo-shadow-atom.html , states it is the first to take a picture of the shadow of an atom. What do you think the picture tells us? Looks like a galaxy or tornado to me.

[NEOWatcher]

It looks like an HB's "photoshop" analysis of some anomoly on the sun.

What I don't understand is how this shadow is captured. They say it's the shadow cast on a detector. Isn't the detector made of atoms? How can the shadow be any bigger than one atom of the detector?

[Strange]

Read the abstract, you wouldn't know they were talking about the same thing.
http://www.nature.com/ncomms/journal...comms1944.html
(Some of the pictures give you a vague idea how the setup works)

[Ara Pacis]

What I don't understand is how this shadow is captured. They say it's the shadow cast on a detector. Isn't the detector made of atoms? How can the shadow be any bigger than one atom of the detector?

Light is also a wave.

[Copernicus]

Maybe the shadow isn't real and the researchers did a sloppy job. Who am I to judge that? I'm just saying, first impression of the picture, what do you see?

[Ara Pacis]

Maybe the shadow isn't real and the researchers did a sloppy job. Who am I to judge that? I'm just saying, first impression of the picture, what do you see?

Interference pattern.

[NEOWatcher]

Light is also a wave.

For that answer to be useful, you would have to say why a wave makes a difference. Otherwise, it's possible for me to interpret that as an insult that I don't know anything about light being a wave. But; I know you have a point, and just didn't explain it.

Thanks to Strange, I have a better understanding.

[IsaacKuo]

What I don't understand is how this shadow is captured. They say it's the shadow cast on a detector. Isn't the detector made of atoms? How can the shadow be any bigger than one atom of the detector?

Not that it's directly relevant to this experiment, but shadows are generally bigger than the thing casting the shadow when the light source is point-like and nearby.

[Ara Pacis]

For that answer to be useful, you would have to say why a wave makes a difference. Otherwise, it's possible for me to interpret that as an insult that I don't know anything about light being a wave. But; I know you have a point, and just didn't explain it.

Thanks to Strange, I have a better understanding.

Actually, I thought all I needed to do was jog your memory because I assumed you weren't stupid and had learned it in high school like most of us. You may be correct in pointing out my error in those assumptions.