From visions of faraway black holes to details of the smallest cells in our bodies, cameras continually open up new worlds to us – and now they have entered the quantum world. At the University of California, Berkeley, a team of physicists and biologists use individual electrons to image proteins inside cells. At such small scales, electrons behave as waves and must be carefully manipulated to extract as much information as possible.

The Berkeley team has pioneered a laser phase plate, which uses the world’s most intense continuous laser to shape the electron wave and achieve some of the clearest images to date of the molecules that make life possible.

Event update: A member of the UC Berkeley team, Dr Eric Cooper, was on his way to Orkney to share the latest images when he tested positive for covid and is currently isolated in Edinburgh – and from there, if all goes well, he will join us on screen in King Street with the pictures, to explain how quantum mechanics holds the key to building ever more powerful quantum cameras.

Cover image – Microscope:  The top of the microscope is an electron gun which accelerates electrons to 78% of the speed of light. These electrons pass through a sample held at -196 degrees C by the vacuum flask of liquid nitrogen visible in the middle of the picture. The electrons then pass through the world’s most intense continuous laser which turns the phase information of the electrons into amplitude information.