Atoms that behave like particles appear as red dots, while atoms that behave like waves spread out into white blobs.
Provided by: Joris Verstraten et al.
This is the clearest image yet of individual atoms behaving like waves, as predicted by quantum mechanics. Such images could eventually be used to study this exotic and poorly understood quantum behavior.
The fact that particles such as atoms can behave like waves is an important insight of quantum theory. The particular shape of a wave that an atom can take is known as a “wave packet” and looks like this:
Source: www.newscientist.com
