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Quantum microscope can examine cells in unprecedented detail
- molticrystal 5y agoHere is another write up linked to by the Queenland Quantum Optics Lab Bowen Research & Translation Laboratory which participated in the research: https://theconversation.com/a-quantum-hack-for-microscopes-can-reveal-the-undiscovered-details-of-life-161182 https://theconversation.com/a-quantum-hack-for-microscopes-c... For those who don't have access to Nature it includes an example image.
- seaorg 5y agoCan someone explain why this is not as big a deal as it seems / bullshit, as usual?
- LoveMortuus 5y agoProbably do to existence of electron microscopy which is already more or less widely used.
- cstross 5y agoElectron microscopy has drawbacks when it comes to studying biological samples. The sample has to be prepared for examination in a vacuum chamber using ionizing radiation and using fixating processes and reagents that kill the cells and may damage/distort lipid membranes. Brief intro here: https://www.sciencelearn.org.nz/resources/500-preparing-samples-for-the-electron-microscope https://www.sciencelearn.org.nz/resources/500-preparing-samp... A low energy optical microscope can examine living samples (in aqueous environments).
- amelius 5y agoBut an electron microscope can see small molecules or even atoms.
- cstross 5y agoThe structures in biological samples are often very delicate, their structures ruined by all of those treatments: think soap bubbles rather than bones. It doesn't matter how small the structures you can observe are if you can't be sure they haven't been warped and distorted by dehydration, doping with heavy metals like osmium, exposure to vacuum, and being blasted with radiation until it's heated to 150 degrees celsius. Don't get me wrong: electron microscopy is great for mineral samples, and can be used for biological samples subject to some constraints. But you can't examine specimens with it while they're alive.
- Gatsky 5y agoThis isn’t bullshit. Directly observing the behaviour of live cells in context is a powerful technique. This work means such techniques will be even more powerful, by increasing the feature resolution and reducing light induced damage to the cells.
- quenix 5y agoWhy the negativity? This can be an interesting, valid scientific advancement while not being a huge breakthrough.
- pb060 5y agoWouldn’t one expect to see at least one image from the microscope in the article, or at least know why there’s none?
- ur-whale 5y agoI agree with you 100%, and I find this happens very often on the net: an article describing something essentially visual that can't bother adding a couple of pics or videos. Frustrating.
- tim333 5y agoIf you click the link to the paper it has info and more images https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03528-w https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03528-w I'm guessing New Scientist had not got permission to use the stuff yet?
- stackedinserter 5y agoIf you click the link, you'll see a paywall.
- luisg0122 5y agoYeah, pretty expensive as well.
- SuoDuanDao 5y agoweird, I can't seem to access it on sci-hub either. Too recent maybe?
- DecayingOrganic 5y agoTo the best of my knowledge, Sci-hub has stopped accepting new articles from the beginning of 2021 due to court orders.
- craftinator 5y ago
- pratio 5y agoThis article gives no information about how these microscopes work, what advantage do they have over electron microscopy. An HN comment below actually provided more context. Who developed this tech and how long have we been working no it. I don't understand how it reached the top posts. Here's a more info from Technion https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HtcVL7KnfCI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HtcVL7KnfCI
- ishtanbul 5y agoThis is why i read hacker news
- wolverine876 5y agoWhy trust a random person on HN over a random person at the New Scientist (who is probably an experienced journalist in the field, and has editors double-checking what they write), who researched the story and spoke to the people who made the microscope? Imagine if someone here said, 'I spoke to the scientists who made the microscope and they said...'. We'd think that was awesome? That's in the New Scientist article.
- doctoboggan 5y agoI don’t think that is the same technology, it seems to be an electron microscope not a light microscope. The article references “squeezed light” which is a trick for adding more certainty to a photons position (at the expense of less certainty in its momentum - heisenburg always wins) To learn more about squeezed light check out this video from PBS Spacetime[0]. The video doesn’t cover this light microscope, but does explain squeezed light. [0]: https://youtu.be/uZDhCW-PTRM https://youtu.be/uZDhCW-PTRM
- wolverine876 5y ago> This article gives no information about how these microscopes work Are we reading different articles? From the article: They used a type of microscope with two laser light sources, but sent one of the beams through a specially designed crystal that “squeezes” the light. It does so by introducing quantum correlations in the photons – the particles of light in the laser beam. The photons were coupled into correlated pairs, and any of them that had energies unlike the others were discarded instead of being paired off. That process lowered the intensity of the beam while decreasing its noise, which allowed for more precise imaging.
- amelius 5y agoCan these quantum microscopes dissolve protein foldings without the need for crystallization?
- aszantu 5y agoY use light? Couldnt they use soundwaves or something else to map cells?
- quenix 5y agoSound waves have a much larger wavelength (in the tens or hundreds of meters). That can never map out the details of a cell. Light, on the other hand, has a wavelength in the order of nanometers. If my math is correct, the wavelength of light is smaller than that of sound by a factor of around 1000000000000 on average.
- sabujp 5y agohere's a full thesis : https://www.researchgate.net/publication/283647869_Quantum-enhanced_nonlinear_spectroscopy https://www.researchgate.net/publication/283647869_Quantum-e...
- TheRealPomax 5y agoWould be nice if the article, you know, explained the part that of the title. The only thing it mentions is: >They used a type of microscope with two laser light sources, but sent one of the beams through a specially designed crystal that “squeezes” the light. It does so by introducing quantum correlations in the photons – the particles of light in the laser beam. The photons were coupled into correlated pairs, and any of them that had energies unlike the others were discarded instead of being paired off. Which tells us nothing, and as someone who took both physics and quantum computing in university, infuriating. They used magic? Got it. Details, or you just made shit up. You're newscientist, do better.
- akiselev 5y agoI'm curious what the dark blobs are in the photos of the live yeast cells in the paper [1]. They look like what I'd expect organelles to look like but yeast are eukaryotes so I'm guessing coagulation of some sort? I would have thought that bacteria would look much more homogeneous internally, at least at this scale. [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03528-w.epdf?sharing_token=z589AjKJ21YqsNSgqbqqjtRgN0jAjWel9jnR3ZoTv0Mno9fr00zq_Eu4WL3ds5lODEwwMyzjZ4XzmXvPXaH4CJC4JR0D8qwlies9DwQ9Wl-a-1EnPERl21cvbtn4SwVAf_Fp-GNwh0qk7C3ut-q6rYQ0kXUN90tBriT91ZrzdFp5exUg_ajSNtrjDtN78GPGUq1K4Ik67I7TJXr53oHqgGO8kXkGbEo_QQHj9KMYhVA%3D&tracking_referrer=www.newscientist.com https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03528-w.epdf?shar...
- failwhaleshark 5y agoIIRC, most configuration of electron microscopes tend to lyse cells because of the environmental conditions of hard vacuum and high charge. Then some instruments came along that took advantage of lysing cells for analysis: flow cytometry. If you can look at cells without going full-power Death Star on them, that sounds damn useful. --- I anticipate Applied Science will build one in his garage over the weekend and apologize for not making it 2 orders-of-magnitude more sensitive than UQ's. :bow before the might of this over-achiever who ships, a hacker as salty as my HP 48G/X:
- jonplackett 5y agoAs I guessed from the url - there’s no image! Why is there never an image? Of course there is a weird artists impression.