by In a Nature article, researchers explain how they’ve been able to take a picture of a cat with photons which never came across that cat. Magic? No, just freaking science.
(you can read the full article here).
We’ve all heard about Schrodinger’s cat experience and even if we did not really understand the rationale behind it, we heard that the cat could be alive and dead at the same time in that box (note : don’t try it at home, just cuddle your cat please). I don’t know nothing about quantum physics, but I’m amazed that researchers have applied that ‘principle’ to photography. What you see below is unbelievable : “A cardboard cut-out of a cat imaged by photons that never went through the cut-out itself. “
Physicists have devised a way to take pictures using light that has not interacted with the object being photographed!!! This form of imaging uses pairs of photons, twins that are ‘entangled’ in such a way that the quantum state of one is inextricably linked to the other. While one photon has the potential to travel through the subject of a photo and then be lost, the other goes to a detector but nonetheless ‘knows’ about its twin’s life and can be used to build up an image.
The researchers imaged a cut-out of a cat, a few millimeters wide, as well as other shapes etched into silicon. The team probed the cat cut-out using a wavelength of light which they knew could not be detected by their camera. “That’s important, it’s the proof that it’s working,” said head researcher Zeilinger.
In the first path, one photon in the pair passes through the object to be imaged, and the other does not. The photon that passed through the object is then recombined with its other ‘possible self’ — which traveled down the second path and not through the object — and is thrown away. The remaining photon from the second path is also reunited with itself from the first path and directed towards a camera, where it is used to build the image, despite having never interacted with the object.
So that’s it. Now we can have a picture made with light that never interacted with the subject. Which pic would you take if you could use that technology?
More info: https://physicsforme.com/2014/01/27/quantum-imaging-with-undetected-photons/
