Electron Microscopes Can Finally See in Wonderful Color

Imagine a Where’s Waldo book with nothing butblack and white pictures. Good luck using his candy-stripesweater as a visual cue. Now you know what it’s like trying to find a virus on a greyscale microscopic image. Microbiologists have dealt with this problem for decades, because when things get small, things go dark. Photons, bits of light essential to discerning color, are too clunky to resolve anything much smaller than say, a synapse connecting two neurons.

Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices