Tiny Spheres Turn Regular Microscopes Into Nanoscopes

Ordinary microscopes can see 8 times more minutely than known physical limits if miniature glass spheres are sprinkled onto samples, according to a new study.

The cheapest and most common microscopes use white light to magnify objects, but the nature of light and the limitations of our eyes mean those microscopes can’t image things smaller than bacteria. Other microscopy techniques, which use lasers, metamaterials and electron beams to image microscopic and nanoscopic worlds, can exceed such limits. But they are difficult, time-consuming and expensive to use, and they can kill live samples.......As on Wired.com