Close-up views of cells.Over the centuries, microscopists have developed many different techniques for staining biological material to highlight certain features of interest in tissue or within individual cells. The same techniques may now prove useful with a new type of optical microscope optical microscope See under microscope. that produces sharp images of objects smaller than the wavelength of light used to illuminate the sample. When light passes through a tiny opening, it tends to spread out, or diffract dif·fract intr. & tr.v. dif·fract·ed, dif·fract·ing, dif·fracts To undergo or cause to undergo diffraction. [Back-formation from diffraction. . This optical effect limits a conventional microscope's resolution. But by making the distance from the aperture to the surface being viewed much smaller than the wavelength of the illuminating light, researchers can evade the diffraction limit and generate high-resolution images of surfaces (see diagram). Eric Betzig of AT&T Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill Murray Hill may refer to one of the following places:
n. 1. A small or very slender candle. 2. A long wax-coated wick used to light candles or gas lamps. 3. A source of feeble light. 4. a. to a fine point 70 nanometers wide and positioned only 10 nanometers above the sample. Moving the glass fiber tip back and forth generates an image that reveals components as small as 15 nanometers across. In tests of their instrument, the researchers have obtained remarkably detailed images of the skeletal sea/folding inside a cell. Betzig described his groups preliminary results at the Quantum Electronics Quantum electronics A loosely defined field concerned with the interaction of radiation and matter, particularly those interactions involving quantum energy levels and resonance phenomena, and especially those involving lasers and masers. and Laser Science Conference, held this week in Baltimore. |
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