X-Message-Number: 29227
From: 
Date: Sat, 3 Mar 2007 18:09:07 EST
Subject: Re: New superlens opens door to nanoscale...

John de Rivaz,
 
Here's a quote from your article:
 
** QUOTE **
Scanning electron and atomic force microscopes are now used to capture  
detail down to a few nanometers. However, such microscopes create images by  
scanning objects point by point, which means they are typically limited to  
non-living samples, and image capture times can take up to several minutes.  

"Optical microscopes can capture an entire frame with a single snapshot  in a 
fraction of a second," said Fang, who is now an assistant professor of  

mechanical engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. "That

opens up nanoscale imaging to living materials, which can help biologists better
 understand cell structure and function in real time, and ultimately help in 
the  development of new drugs to treat human diseases." 
** UNQOUTE **
 
It's not a 100-fold improvement in the electron microscope, but it's  

certainly big progress. I think Richard Feynman would be  pleased.  Here's a 
quote of 
his:


** QUOTE **
We have friends in other fields---in biology, for instance. We physicists  
often look at them and say, ``You know the reason you fellows are making so  

little progress?'' (Actually I don't know any field where they are making more
rapid progress than they are in biology today.) ``You should use more  

mathematics, like we do.'' They could answer us---but they're polite, so I'll  
answer 
for them: ``What you should do in order for us to make more  rapid progress is 
to make the electron microscope 100 times better.'' 
** UNQUOTE **
 
 
Plenty of Room at the Bottom
Richard P. Feynman
December 1959
 
_http://www.its.caltech.edu/~feynman/plenty.html_ 
(http://www.its.caltech.edu/~feynman/plenty.html) 


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