Zitat des Tages von Stefan Hell:
Calling on each molecule one by one? No way. I just told all of them to be quiet - except for a selected few.
I got bored with the topic; I felt this was 19th century physics. I was wondering if there was still something profound that could be made with light microscopy. So I saw that the diffraction barrier was the only important problem that had been left over.
I imagined there would be a way to crack the diffraction barrier. But of course I didn't know exactly how it would work, but I had a gut feeling that there must be something, and so I tried to think about it, to be creative.
I love to be a scientist. I've always enjoyed being curious.
According to the belief, molecules closer together than 200 nanometers could not be told apart with focused light. This is because, in a packed molecular crowd, the molecules shout out their fluorescence simultaneously, causing their signal, their voices, to be confused.
There is still refinement needed - we are working on being able to do the same things at lower light levels and with a larger field of view.
