Posted on 03/02/2011 5:30:14 AM PST by decimon
UK researchers have demonstrated the highest-resolution optical microscope ever - aided by tiny glass beads.
The microscope imaged objects down to just 50 billionths of a metre to yield a never-before-seen, direct glimpse into the "nanoscopic" world.
The team says the method could even be used to view individual viruses.
Their technique, reported in Nature Communications, makes use of "evanescent waves", emitted very near an object and usually lost altogether.
Instead, the beads gather the light and re-focus it, channelling it into a standard microscope.
This allowed researchers to see with their own eyes a level of detail that is normally restricted to indirect methods such as atomic force microscopy or scanning electron microscopy.
Some of these indirect methods have imaged to a resolution of one billionth of a metre (nanometre), and even given a glimpse of a single molecule - but none is the same as simply looking down a microscope directly at details this tiny.
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.co.uk ...
Imperceptible ping.
That is clever: exploiting a backdoor past the diffraction limit.
With this instrument it may be possible to view Obama’s moral character.
Ok, sorry, couldn't resist, even though I should have.
And no, we cannot use it to view obama's moral character. You just can't see what isn't there at all. That is, unless you're a liberal trying to advance an agenda, then you can see all kinds of made-up data.
Catch the wave.
Maybe someday we’ll be able to view the benefits of Obama’s green jobs programs.
We just have to remember its all about the smallest details.
———Is there a practical application for this? -———
Sort of like printed circuits or personal computers
We don’t know until the device is used to determine the practical appplications
Now we can find Barry’s birth certificate
There used to be some (fringe-y) articles online about analogous claims about a lone researcher claiming such high resolutions with his optical microscope. Seems to me he was from Canada, but I can’t even remember what the website was offhand.
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