To See What Cannot Be Seen

[Sukerkin]

I am much taken with this advance in the field of optical microscopy:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12612209

How very cool - to be able to see that which is too small to be seen with visible light ... or at least so it used to be :tup:.

 

[Bill Mattocks]

And curiously, your tagline plays into this...

 

[Sukerkin]

:chuckles: So it does! Well observed, Bill .

 

[Empty Hands]

I love stuff like this. A single molecule image from a related BBC article:

Here's the wire drawing of that same molecule:

Even the hydrogen bonds can be seen, projecting straight up and down from the edges of the molecule. You can see how the imaging technique is picking out exact structural details that we've known about but never actually seen before now.

A bacteriophage virus infecting a cell using electron microscopy:

Blood cells, using a scanning electron microscope:

Actin filaments (green), mitochondria (red) and the nucleus (blue) of a cell using confocal light microscopy:

This is the sort of imaging that I do. I need to do some today in fact, my cells are recovering before I do the experiment.

 

[Phenix_Rider]

Impressive.

I'm not up to date in microscopy techniques by any means. Though I seem to remember learning that the limit to resolution of optical microscopes was on the same order as the wavelength used. So something like 700 nm was the bottom limit.

What does this technique involve to prepare samples? The glass beads they mention must look like a liquid, or an extremely fine sand (more like dust).

 

[Empty Hands]

I'm not up to date in microscopy techniques by any means. Though I seem to remember learning that the limit to resolution of optical microscopes was on the same order as the wavelength used. So something like 700 nm was the bottom limit.

Less than 700nm, but yes. The point of this technique though is to use a trick to get around the diffraction limit. There are other tricks one can use, although not as effective as this technique. Software based 3D deconvolution (originally developed to correct blurry Hubble photos) is one such method. Here is an example, standard capture on the left, deconvoluted on the right.

 

[girlbug2]

I like mitochondria

 

[Sukerkin]

Here's an equally exciting story in a similar vein:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12649622

 

[stickarts]

Amazing and very cool!

 

[K-man]

Then we have the opposite for the Harry Potter fans.

To not see what can be seen!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/feb/01/scientists-invent-invisibility-cloak

:erg: :erg: :erg:

 

[Sukerkin]

Aye, I saw that a while back - fascinating. It might not seem mightily impressive to hide an object inside another transparent object but it's the 'working at visible wavelengths' part that represents the big leap.