<story><title>People can sense single photons</title><url>http://www.nature.com/news/people-can-sense-single-photons-1.20282</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>white-flame</author><text>If you pay close attention in very low level light situations, you&amp;#x27;ll notice that what you do see (or at least what &lt;i&gt;I&lt;/i&gt; see) is actually reminiscent of the RGB graininess of low level light photographs.  That graininess is to my understanding caused by the variation of the number of photons hitting that portion of the receptors, which is unnoticeable when flooded with quadjillions of them in decent lighting.&lt;p&gt;So this is a nice semi-expected result in this experiment, though it does seem to be near the limit of default human perception.&lt;p&gt;I wonder how well somebody could train themselves to notice single-photon events, much like musicians can notice tiny audio events and variations.</text></comment>
<story><title>People can sense single photons</title><url>http://www.nature.com/news/people-can-sense-single-photons-1.20282</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>Thrender</author><text>What&amp;#x27;s sticking out to me is that they definitely showed individuals can detect a single photon in some sense, but they did so statistically-- No individual was ever confident that any single event happened.&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;s something really philosophically fascinating going on here that I can&amp;#x27;t quite articulate. It&amp;#x27;s like, did some people really see single photons? Or did the group collectively see a photon packet?</text></comment>