{"id":158687,"date":"2014-10-21T18:05:48","date_gmt":"2014-10-21T20:05:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/?p=158687"},"modified":"2014-11-21T18:14:30","modified_gmt":"2014-11-21T20:14:30","slug":"light-sees-couldnt-see","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/light-sees-couldnt-see\/","title":{"rendered":"The light that sees what it couldn\u2019t see"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_158689\" style=\"max-width: 300px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-158689\" src=\"http:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/Tecno_catOutline4.jpg\" alt=\"The cat silhouette on the right is a result of detected photons that had never interacted with the cut-out (left)\" width=\"290\" height=\"204\" srcset=\"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/Tecno_catOutline4.jpg 290w, https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/Tecno_catOutline4-120x84.jpg 120w, https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/Tecno_catOutline4-250x176.jpg 250w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 290px) 100vw, 290px\" \/><p class=\"wp-caption-text\"><span class=\"media-credits-inline\">GABRIELA BARRETO LEMOS E COLABORADORES \/ UNIVERSIty of VIEnNA<\/span>The cat silhouette on the right is a result of detected photons that had never interacted with the cut-out (<em>left<\/em>)<span class=\"media-credits\">GABRIELA BARRETO LEMOS E COLABORADORES \/ UNIVERSIty of VIEnNA<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n<p>An international team of physicists has achieved a seemingly impossible feat: photographing objects without using any photons (light particles) that come into contact with them. They produced images using a camera that captures special photons that are connected only remotely with those that actually illuminate the target objects (<em><i>Nature<\/i><\/em>, August 28, 2014). \u201cWe were able to transmit all the information from the photons that interacted with the objects to the photons that we detected,\u201d explains Brazilian physicist Gabriela Barreto Lemos, who conducted the experiment and has been working since 2012 at the University of Vienna in the laboratory of Anton Zeilinger, nicknamed \u201cMr. Beam\u201d for his experiments showing the peculiar workings of quantum mechanics. Lemos says she was delighted by the idea of the experiment. \u201cBut sometimes I got really mad, because it&#8217;s not easy to play with photons you can&#8217;t detect.\u201d The experiment was conducted using a circuit of mirrors targeted by laser beams. Two crystals created pairs of \u201csibling\u201d photons: one with an infrared wavelength and the other with a wavelength corresponding to red visible light. Even after taking different paths, the photons from a single pair shared information, in a phenomenon called quantum entangling. Only the infrared photons actually came into contact with the target object \u2013 a piece of cardboard with a cutout in the shape of a cat, in honor of physicist Erwin Schr\u00f6dinger, who called attention to the absurd consequences of quantum mechanics in 1935 when he proposed a mental experiment in which a cat would be simultaneously alive and dead. Yet the cameras at the end of the circuit detected only the red photons. The circuit is set up in such a way that when a photon strikes the cardboard, it is possible to know which crystal produced it. But when a photon passes through the cat-shaped cut-out, it&#8217;s as if it had been emitted by both crystals at the same time. \u201cThe image is created by a quantum juxtaposition of both possibilities,\u201d Lemos explains. \u201cWhat we see on camera exists only because we don&#8217;t know which crystal created the photons.\u201d The method, patented by the researchers, may be useful for imaging biological tissues and live cells.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Group takes photographs without using light particles","protected":false},"author":475,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[168],"tags":[235],"coauthors":[785],"class_list":["post-158687","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technoscience","tag-physics"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158687","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/475"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=158687"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158687\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=158687"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=158687"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=158687"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=158687"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}