Quantum microscope can examine cells in unprecedented detail

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2280216-quantum-microscope-can-examine-cells-in-unprecedented-detail/

by pps • 5 years ago

100 34 5 years ago

newscientist.com

seaorg• 5 years ago

Can someone explain why this is not as big a deal as it seems / bullshit, as usual?

LoveMortuus• 5 years ago

Probably do to existence of electron microscopy which is already more or less widely used.

cstross2• 5 years ago

Electron 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-samp...

A low energy optical microscope can examine living samples (in aqueous environments).

Gatsky• 5 years ago

This 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.

quenix2• 5 years ago

Why the negativity? This can be an interesting, valid scientific advancement while not being a huge breakthrough.

pb060• 5 years ago

Wouldn’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• 5 years ago

I 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• 5 years ago

If you click the link to the paper it has info and more images https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03528-w

I'm guessing New Scientist had not got permission to use the stuff yet?

stackedinserter• 5 years ago

If you click the link, you'll see a paywall.

bryan0• 5 years ago

Oh you didn’t find the image captioned “An artist’s impression of a quantum microscope” of what appears to be an alien tractor beam sucking up small creatures helpful??

perl4ever• 5 years ago

No, I have come to expect that any article like this, about microscopes or telescopes or any imaging technology, is guaranteed not to have any example of what they are talking about.

pratio• 5 years ago

This 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

ishtanbul• 5 years ago

This is why i read hacker news

wolverine8762• 5 years ago

Why 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• 5 years ago

I 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

wolverine8762• 5 years 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.

molticrystal• 5 years ago

Here 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-c...

For those who don't have access to Nature it includes an example image.

amelius2• 5 years ago

Can these quantum microscopes dissolve protein foldings without the need for crystallization?

aszantu• 5 years ago

Y use light? Couldnt they use soundwaves or something else to map cells?

quenix2• 5 years ago

Sound 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.

grishka• 5 years ago

Couldn't they use shorter wavelengths of light than the visible spectrum to resolve more detail? Like low-energy x-rays or something.

sabujp• 5 years ago

here's a full thesis : https://www.researchgate.net/publication/283647869_Quantum-e...

TheRealPomax• 5 years ago

Would 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• 5 years ago

I'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?shar...

failwhaleshark• 5 years ago

IIRC, 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.

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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• 5 years ago

As I guessed from the url - there’s no image! Why is there never an image? Of course there is a weird artists impression.

Quantum microscope can examine cells in unprecedented detail

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