[HN Gopher] Quantum microscope can examine cells in unprecedente...
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Quantum microscope can examine cells in unprecedented detail
Author : pps
Score : 91 points
Date : 2021-06-26 10:29 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.newscientist.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.newscientist.com)
| pb060 wrote:
| Wouldn't one expect to see at least one image from the microscope
| in the article, or at least know why there's none?
| perl4ever wrote:
| 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.
| bryan0 wrote:
| 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??
| ur-whale wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| If you click the link, you'll see a paywall.
| luisg0122 wrote:
| Yeah, pretty expensive as well.
| SuoDuanDao wrote:
| weird, I can't seem to access it on sci-hub either. Too
| recent maybe?
| DecayingOrganic wrote:
| To the best of my knowledge, Sci-hub has stopped
| accepting new articles from the beginning of 2021 due to
| court orders.
| craftinator wrote:
| "Stop aiding and abetting the scientific process at once!
|
| -The Court "
| oceliker wrote:
| The reference link at the end of the New Scientist article
| is a special (SharedIt) link that bypasses the paywall: htt
| ps://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03528-w.epdf?shar..
| .
| amelius wrote:
| Can these quantum microscopes dissolve protein foldings without
| the need for crystallization?
| akiselev wrote:
| 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...
| aszantu wrote:
| Y use light? Couldnt they use soundwaves or something else to map
| cells?
| quenix wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Couldn't they use shorter wavelengths of light than the
| visible spectrum to resolve more detail? Like low-energy
| x-rays or something.
| Retric wrote:
| Up to a point. Unfortunately, shorter wavelengths mean more
| energy per photon which interacts with what you're trying
| to observe.
| TheRealPomax wrote:
| 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.
| pratio wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| This is why i read hacker news
| seaorg wrote:
| Can someone explain why this is not as big a deal as it seems /
| bullshit, as usual?
| LoveMortuus wrote:
| Probably do to existence of electron microscopy which is
| already more or less widely used.
| cstross wrote:
| 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).
| amelius wrote:
| But an electron microscope can see small molecules or even
| atoms.
| cstross wrote:
| The 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.
| quenix wrote:
| Why the negativity? This can be an interesting, valid
| scientific advancement while not being a huge breakthrough.
| Gatsky wrote:
| 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.
| failwhaleshark wrote:
| 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.
|
| ---
|
| 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:
| sabujp wrote:
| here's a full thesis :
| https://www.researchgate.net/publication/283647869_Quantum-e...
| molticrystal wrote:
| 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.
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(page generated 2021-06-26 23:01 UTC)