'Super-microscope' opens at Isis

[edesignuk]

The world's newest "super microscope" is fired up and ready to go.

The £200m second target station at Isis in Oxfordshire will allow scientists to see things 10,000 times thinner than a human hair.

The machine is known as a pulsed neutron source. But what does that actually mean?

Well, if you're a physicist curious to see how matter behaves when no-one is looking, then Isis is your private snoop.

If you're an engineer trying to make the hydrogen car a working reality, then Isis is your genie.

Want to see how spiders spin silk stronger than steel? Or peer into a newborn baby's lungs as they take their first breath? BBC (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7686622.stm).

:cool:

[iBlue]

That's cool. I want to use it!

I've used a Scanning Electron Microscope and on a particularly eventful day in the lab I got some cool views of split hair end, a fly's eye, table salt and some dead skin from my peeling sunburn. I printed them and put them in the lunchroom. :D But a SEM doesn't even remotely compare to this, obviously.