Slashdot Mirror
Diffraction Limit Has Been Beaten
deglr6328 writes "In what is being heralded variously as a "remarkable accomplishment" and a "breakthrough", physicists have reportedly beaten the diffraction limit at optical frequencies. First hypothesized to be possible 30 years ago by Russian physicist Victor Veselago, meta-material "superlenses" with negative refractive indices were first demonstrated around 2001 at microwave frequencies. The use of a thin silver film as an optical superlens in this case, has allowed the team to resolve features less than 40 nanometers wide; 10 times better than any conventional optical microscope. The consequences of the discovery are immediately apparent and include opportunities for extremely fine biomedical imaging in-vivo and greater increases in transistor density for microchips by superlens augmentation of photolithography masks."
Ever since Star Trek: First Contact, I've been wanting to get contacts/implants like Geordi's artificial eyes... Zoom would be SUCH a handy feature for regular vision! I wonder if something like this could be adapted to that kind of application.
Windows isn't the answer... it's the question. NO is the answer!
Can anybody illustrate diffraction limit? The wikipedia definition is too geeky.
I don't suppose they'll find a way to apply this to mirrors, too?
:)
Though if it's just lenses, we might still see some very nice next-generation refracting telescopes.
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
I was wondering about this as well - the number of observations we are making of planets in other solar systems is already astonishingly large given the angular distance these objects subtend as viewed from Earth (true, many of the observations are indirect and thus don't directly depend upon the angular distance).
I wonder if the breakthroughs in bypassing the diffraction limit will allow for direct imaging of larger bodies (Jovian worlds at Jovian orbital distances).
www.eFax.com are spammers
One day, perhaps, scientists will invent new & modernly acceptable language to say the same thing that Royal Raymond Rife was talking about earlier last century. Rife's microscope was a truly unique invention that still lacks rigorous investigation, mainly due to its extraordinary claims giving it a 'quack' status. The curioes can start at places like here. For those who read with a "zero tolerance" filter for anything that doesn't sound like a recent issue of Science or Nature, please step lightly where people are using "volatile" language....
.
-shpoffo