Researchers catch motion of a single electron on video

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Captured on a home video camera some electrons follow a straight path through superfluid helium (far left). Those entrained in a superfluid vortex follow a snakelike path. Credit: Image: Humphrey Maris and Wei Guo
Captured on a home video camera, some electrons follow a straight path through superfluid helium (far left). Those entrained in a superfluid vortex follow a snakelike path. Credit: Image: Humphrey Maris and Wei Guo

To observe the motion of an electron – an elementary particle with a mass that is one billionth of a billionth of a billionth of a gram – has been considered to be impossible. So when two Brown University physicists showed movies of electrons moving through liquid helium at the 2006 International Symposium on Quantum Fluids and Solids in Kyoto, they raised some eyebrows.


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