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At the most basic level, everything is made of tiny atoms.
As a way to recognize that fundamental fact, it seems appropriate that a stunning image depicting one single positively-charged strontium atom just won a prestigious photography award.
The image, which shows the atom trapped by electric fields, was the overall winner of this year's science photography competition put on by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council of the UK.
The photo, taken by David Nadlinger from the University of Oxford, actually shows the light particles re-emitted by the trapped atom, as you can see in the photo below. (That light is hundreds of times larger than the atom itself and can be captured in a visible shot using a digital camera, though you can't see anything the size of an atom without a powerful microscope.)
It's not the only stunning shot from the competition, which also includes photos of the fascinating fluid patterns on a bubble of soap, the structures that cover a butterfly's wing, and a robot learning to take a selfie.
Here's a selection of the winning images.
The single atom in the winning photo is being held by equipment used to explore quantum physics.
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This engineered, biologically accurate model of tissue could help replace animal models that are used to study neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's.
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Biodegradable microparticles like this one could help drugs penetrate further into cancerous tumors.
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See the rest of the story at Business Insider
