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World's Most Powerful Optical Microscope
gamricstone writes "Scientists have produced the world's most powerful optical microscope, which could help understand the causes of many viruses and diseases. Previously, the standard optical microscope could only see items around one micrometre — 0.001 millimetres — clearly. But now, by combining an optical microscope with a transparent microsphere, dubbed the 'microsphere nanoscope,' the Manchester researchers can see 20 times smaller — 50 nanometres ((5 x 10-8m) — under normal lights. This is beyond the theoretical limit of optical microscopy. 'Seeing inside a cell directly without [it] dying and seeing living viruses directly could revolutionize the way cells are studied and allow us to examine closely viruses and biomedicine for the first time.'"
I didn't know microscopy was such a dangerous line of work...
Gee thanks, after all those thousands of cpu-hours my machines spent simulating proteins interacting, they can apparently now just look at the damn thing and record the results. Damn you, progress...
Maybe you could, oh I don't know, read the article? Just first posting some dumb question that can easily be answered by taking a second to READ does not make you seem insightful. Of course, it wouldn't take a genius to figure it out without even reading. This new technique is beyond the theoretical limits of standard optical microscopy because it doesn't freaking USE standard optical microscopy. Uh dur.
The new nano-imaging system is based on capturing optical, near-field virtual images, which are free from optical diffraction, and amplifying them using a microsphere, a tiny spherical particle which is further relayed and amplified by a standard optical microscope.
Professor Li, who initiated and led the research in collaboration with academics at the National University and Data Storage Institute of Singapore, believes their research could prove to be an important development.
He said: "This is a world record in terms of how small an optical microscope can go by direct imaging under a light source covering the whole range of optical spectrum.
"Not only have we been able to see items of 50 nanometres, we believe that is just the start and we will be able to see far smaller items.
"Theoretically, there is no limit on how small an object we will be able to see.
However, even with no limits, these scientists would be hard pressed to image your brain.
Actually, it would seem you fail English via trying to apply mathematical rules to it.
The phrases 'times less than', 'times smaller', 'times fewer' have been in use in the English language for hundreds of years. Swift, Newton, Herschel, Boyle, and Locke all used those phrases at one point or another in their works. Now, generally speaking an argument from authority is not a good argument, but when you're talking about language which is by definition defined by the way it's used I think it is a sound one here. Those examples of usage are from hundreds of years ago, by some of the most educated, intelligent people of their times, I think it is safe to say the phrases were in standard usage then as they are now.
Obviously you can argue that logically or mathematically the phrasing doesn't make sense. The thing about language is that is is neither mathematical nor logical.
There's (a bit) more information on the technique here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12612209
This is beyond the theoretical limit of optical microscopy." So either the scientists are lying, or the theory is wrong. Which is it? Pons? Fleischmann? Anyone?
The dumbed down version (the only one I understand): light has a "size" of about 200 nanometers, and you wouldn't expect to see detail smaller than that using light. Recently though, people have found a way around that.
This actually isn't the first microscope to break that barrier. There's OMX for one.
Here's the original non-lame paper
http://www.nature.com/ncomms/journal/v2/n3/full/ncomms1211.html
and a bbc article for good measure:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12612209
I work in a biology lab, and looking directly into a cell is one of my most dangerous tasks. Lesser men have been struck dead by viewing the horrors that lurk beneath the cell membrane. A microscope that lets us look inside a cell without dying would revolutionise biology forever!
"A week in the lab saves an hour in the library"
So is the theory wrong, is the article wrong (yes, I did RTFA), or did they find some clever workaround?
This is one of several clever workarounds. The article lacks details, I'm guessing it's because the concept is pretty complex. I only half understand the structured illumination method mentioned in that wiki article and I think that's probably a simpler concept.
"This is beyond the theoretical limit of optical microscopy."
So either the scientists are lying, or the theory is wrong. Which is it? Pons? Fleischmann? Anyone?
Its journalist BS. Doesn't mean a hell of a lot. When does journalist BS mean anything?
Way back in 1874 Abbe figured out the theoretical limit of microscope resolution. Far field resolution with positive refractive index materials, that is. Thats all we had back then. Kind of like how the romans probably could have made silicon diodes, if only they had purer silicon...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_Abbe
Abbe figured the resolution only depends on the wavelength of the light being viewed and the NA of the lense (numerical aperture)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numerical_Aperture
Its kind of like those theoretical thermodynamic limits. Not that its easy to even come close, but conventional physics says this is as far as you could dream of going...
For decades (centuries, really) they fooled with stranger and shorter light wavelengths, and continually optimized the material science of their lenses to get better NAs. Unfortunately they optimized themselves into quite a tight little local minimum. Recently they came up with some pretty far out material science. Also some pretty weird electromagnetics, trying to use nearfield instead of a farfield system.
They "broke all the rules", in journalist speak, much like a music band or a car body designer breaks all the rules, but that doesn't mean they can levitate or glow in the dark or something, it just means they tried something pretty far out. Unlike the car designers and musicians, the result of this foolishness is actually pretty cool and useful.
You could accurately compare near and far field work like conventional vs quantum mechanics in that a lot of what you "expect" from one, does not work in the other.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evanescent_wave
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superlens
Pretty much useless theoretical foolishness for a traditional microscope, right? Well it turns out by some trickery you can apply that kind of stuff after all.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_resolution_microscopy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_internal_reflection_fluorescence_microscope
This article is not about a totally new area of science or something, just one particularly well done demonstration / experiment. Its some cool applied engineering, not new theoretical science. And I believe my little /. post is probably better and more informative than any mainstream media story will be about this topic.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
It is a matter of simplicity of optics, damage to the sample and contrast. Visible light optics are very advanced (i.e. glass lenses), but it starts to get difficult as you head towards shorter wavelenths. X rays, especially high energy (short wavelength) ones, are extremely hard to focus. Short wavelengths of light also damage biological samples (imagine UV and sunburn). A key requirement for generating an image is high contrast, use of very short wavelength light/electrons requires heavy metal staining to get good contrast, not exactly ideal for looking at a living cell.