But there's still no sign of Bigfoot.

Much like a storyline out of a Disney movie, scientists have successfully separated a little electron from its parent atom and filmed it. Granted, the footage is no Finding Nemo, but the film is the first of its kind and will be featured later on in the blog entry. (I know the suspense must be killing you.)

For those of you who don't remember anything from chemistry class, these are electrons:



Hopefully the image rings a bell, even though electrons don't really rotate in such clear-cut shells. Turns out that electrons travel in clouds, but you are not going to hear about it from me. Anyway, electrons are subatomic particles that essentially grab onto and jump off of other atoms in order to form compounds.

As mentioned in Live Science, the film depicts an electron "rid[ing] on a light wave after just having been pulled away from an atom." I'll let you interpret that for yourselves:



To me, the footage looks like something I'd see on screen at a rave* — but maybe it's just the music. It really just looks like a thumbprint wiggling around the center of the frame, but I'm sure it means the world to some scientists.


*And they do still exist.