Researchers are now able to look at the fundamentals of life in staggeringly new detail.
Success Doesn’t Come Cheap
This microscope has not come cheap whatsoever. This microscope costs £5m. This is why major universities like Glasgow, Dundee, Edinburgh and St. Andrews have all helped in getting this microscope to Scotland. This microscope is the only one in the United Kingdom and it’s one of only a few in the world.
This microscope will be able to help find treatment to deadly diseases. It can image samples down to -197 Celsius.
Exciting Times
Dr David Bhella, the director of SCMI, is really intrigued by this microscope saying,
‘It looks a little like an albino version of the monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey,’
adding,
‘nitrogen temperatures, it’s a high voltage transmission electron microscope that’s designed for looking at specimens at liquid nitrogen temperatures.’
A scientist who uses the microscope said that if you put 10000 viruses in a line it would be a size of a full stop.
Scientists are now hoping more of these microscopes are going to get built across the country so that it will be more efficient to find cures to life threatening diseases.
Once scientists were criticised for knowing more and more about less and less. Now they know more about smaller and smaller. And that’s a good thing.
- By Andrew Mckay, Reporter
- Sources: Glasgow University, BBC News
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