UVic getting world's most powerful microscope
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Updated: July 20, 2009 8:35 AM
Sub-atomic particles of the world, get ready for your close up.
University of Victoria researchers will soon be able to see the smallest things in the universe in a way no one has before.
The university is acquiring an $8-million scanning transmission electron holography microscope, and it will have the most powerful resolution of any microscope ever built, explained lab manager Elaine Humphrey.
"If you think of a milimetre and divide by 1,000, you have have a micrometre. Divide each micrometre by 1,000 and you have a nanometre. Divide each nanometre by 1,000 and you have a picometre."
"And if you think of a hydrogen atom being about 200 picometres, we're looking at less than 50 picometres. So it can look at sub-atomic particles."
It's also unlike conventional scanning electron microscopes in that it can see inside cells and other structures, she said.
"Whenever you see an electron microscope picture that (looks) very cool, it's usually done on a scanning electron microscope ... you can see it's a virus or it's a pollen grain or a zoolarva that's going to grow up to be a plankton or a bacterium. Whereas with a transmission electron microscope, you're looking inside at parts of it."
While the new microscope, being built in Japan by Hitachi High-Technologies, won't be delivered until 2011, Humphrey said it will be open to UVic researchers, hospitals and private companies.
"You can use it for nuclear physics, you can use it for fuel cell (research), you can use it for medicine, viruses, bacteria."
To give one example, she said researchers could use the tool to map the protein structure of viruses, possibly leading to drugs that better block them from binding to human cells.
And while the world-beating microscope is still three years from being ready, Humphrey's lab has just acquired one of the highest-resolution microscopes in Canada, a one-nanometer scanning electron microscope worth more than $500,000.
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