High-Resolution Optical Imaging

sp00 writes "Researchers at the University of Rochester have created the highest resolution optical image ever, revealing structures as small as carbon nanotubes just a few billionths of an inch across. The new method should open the door to previously inaccessible chemical and structural information in samples as small as the proteins embedded in a cell's membrane. The research appears in today's issue of Physical Review Letters."

Comments

Read the article, have some questions..

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First of all, they call it an optical microscope. But I couldn't find any optics. Besides, an electron microscope does have optics. So if they want to call it something, shouldn't it be a light microscope?

Secondly, the whole context of the article was that this would let you 'see' as in with light, what something would look like. Reading the article, we find out that the photons are emitted from the sample in some way that might not at all correspond with what the thing might 'look' like.

I guess this opens up the whole question of what something *might* look like when you are imaging it at a resolution far beyond the traditional resolution of light.