You don't even need to capture a photon coming from the object.<p>Shoot a red laser at a couple of non-linear crystals to split the photons into a red/infrared entangled pair. Now, send the infrared ones through the object and into the other crystal while you divert the red ones to a screen without touching the object. As you can no longer determine which infrared photon belongs to what entangled pair the information they ones had is now contained in the red photons instead - and an image of the object appears on the screen.<p><a href="http://medienportal.univie.ac.at/presse/aktuelle-pressemeldungen/detailansicht/artikel/quantenphysik-ermoeglicht-revolutionaeres-abbildungsverfahren-kopie-1/" rel="nofollow">http://medienportal.univie.ac.at/presse/aktuelle-pressemeldu...</a><p>Who the hell needs magic when there's quantum physics.
This is similar to nuclear gamma-ray imaging, such as in medical application, where the number of counts is inherently low because the high energy photons are more penetrating and thus escape the camera.
I wonder if this could be used to boost resolution of SEM and similar devices with electrons instead of photons. It'd make imaging non-metallic objects a lot easier since you won't have to bombard it with as many electrons, potentially destroying the object you want to examine.
Maybe it's just my eyeballs, but it looks like the <1 photon/pixel result was kind of fuzzy vs. the higher photon count image (cf. wasp wing).<p>If the idea is getting targeted bits of information about an object, as in whether a feature is present or absent, the very low photon image might meet the need.<p>However, with photography as art, the requirements for image resolution would be much higher, much more similar to the multi-photon image examples.<p>So it would appear mileage varies: the minimal photon images suit the minimalist domain, but an ordinary high-resolution image would require many more photons/pixel to get the expected result.