The electron microscope is a fascinating scientific twist — it use an negatron beam to elucidate a specimen , magnify it up to 10 million times . With it , scientists can depend deeply into the substance of the world that beleaguer us — and incur another universe , very like to ours .
This absolutely amazing Tumblr blog — edited byJanelle Shane , a PhD student in electric engineering science at theUltrafast and Nanoscale Optics GroupatUniversity of California San Diego — present stunning photos of nanoscale scene , many of them featuring detritus speck and nanoscale structures . Amazingly , even at such a micro scale , it ’s easy to spot prospect that our eye interpret as familiar — from mountain landscapes to common breakwater .
The following assemblage contains our favorite images from the UCSD ’s cleanrooms , each depicting a surprisingly familiar scene . Think of them as microscopic , dust - hold Rorschach trial run . ( All text edition and photos , republished here with permission , are by Janelle Shane . )
A massive cliff
The crushed edge of a piece of semiconductor laser material , viewed at 2,402x under an negatron microscope . At this magnification , it ’s clear-cut that the edge is n’t cleanly break at all , but has all sort of furrows and ripples , all invisible to the naked eye , making it look like a massive cliff . In realism , this cliff is microscopical – this entire view cover less than the breadth of a undivided human hair .
exposure : Janelle Shane / USCD / lewisandquark.tumblr.com
Devil’s Tower
More unusual naturalistic formations in a sampling where the plasma etch go really , really wrong . This was supposed to be flat , empty , and utterly placid . really , it still wait that way under anything but an electron microscope … an ant could step on this and not even notice . It ’s plenty , though , to entail catastrophe for this particular sampling .
On a pedestal
A speck of dust model on a pedestal – this is a smallish firearm of junk , only about 1/100 the thickness of an average human tomentum . The rubble made its own footstall by protecting a lowly area from the high - vim plasma that I was using to etch off the surface all around it . Apart from the rubble ( and from that harsh sphere in the background ) , the open came out passably smooth . I gave this sample an extra clean and zap it with plasma again – afterwards , all these weird features were go .
Bridge over troubled water
Nanoscale force out work in non - intuitive ways sometimes . This wall of semiconductor machine was plasm - engrave so thin that the middle was etched entirely away , leaving the wall ’s top floating spookily above void . It ’s slight and lacy , and only touches the bulwark ’s bottom in a few delicate blank space , yet it does n’t fall , even when I shuttle the sampling from build and move it in and out of the electron microscope . It ’s terrifically pocket-sized – a undivided computer virus could slip through the break , but a bacterium could n’t , and a human cell for certain could n’t . The surrounding arena is rough and hilly because of some sort of filth that was on the sampling airfoil during the first plasm etching . A round of microwave plasm treatment , followed by a turn more plasma etching , smoothed everything down .
The Irish highlands
Made of blue strips of laser - mellow out domain , interspersed with undimmed less - damaged regions . I ’m not sure what the great deal is made of – maybe even the melted remains of a dust speck . You ’d have to stack a thousand of the deal on top of each other to equate one millimeter .
Nano Boba Fett?
This is an artifact made of semiconductor laser material , that appeared during a cognitive operation meant to engrave all the optical maser material away . believably it was form by a speck of dust landing in that spot and protect the fabric underneath from the etching plasma … the remnants of the detritus are likely the domed minute on top . The dark area in front is made of glass . Because glass is more of an electrical nonconductor than semiconductor , it await darker under the negatron microscope , since it sucks up electrons rather than reflecting them back to the microscope ’s detector . All of this is way , way , too small to see by eye … in fact , the top airfoil looks perfectly smooth , even under a veritable microscope . Only under an electron microscope is all this unbalanced analysis situs revealed .
This is a mole
This is a undivided hint of dust , viewed at 14,000x under an electron microscope . It ’s small enough that it would fit easily inside one of your electric cell . My lab build most of our nanostructures in cleanrooms , designed to keep out dust like this … compared to the sizing of the structures we ’re making , like those at the back of the picture , dust is huge . A niggling bit of dust is hard to avoid , though , and one has to sometimes just go for that the dust does n’t set down somewhere inauspicious .
Canyons and rocks and plateaus
Nature repeats itself on a modest scale – These mesas and plateaus are only about 500 millimicron high-pitched … if you stacked 2,000 of them on top of each other , they ’d just be a millimetre high . How did this come about ? The integral landscape painting is made of laser cloth , which I was etching away with mellow - energy plasma . I had protected just a few area from the blood plasma by cut across them ( near the midriff of the picture , you could see the foresighted horizontal bulwark I was stress to make ) . regrettably , when I was put this sample distribution in the etcher , some oil got onto the airfoil , and must have scatter itself in lilliputian river and droplets , protect each of those areas from the plasma as well . The result ? This tiny and queerly naturalistic landscape .
The Berlin Wall
I have somehow created nanopeople . Their heads are made of laser stuff and their organic structure are made of Si , which entail there ’s a remote chance that some of them could be lasers . They ’re each so pocket-sized ( 300 nm mellow ) that a normal bacterium would look to them like a massive log animate being . The wall in the center is something I really make on purpose – the little nanopillars just appear due to something weird that happened during the bulwark ’s formation . It ’s a picayune eerie how they seem to be giving the paries extra distance . In fact – not going to rest – it ’s also eerie to see them covering the landscape by the thousands . I ’m glad the microscope room is bright - lighted .
A pirouetting bison
A mote of debris , take in under the electron microscope . look a bit to me like a pirouette bison . The dust is definitely microscopic – about 40 of these would gibe inside your average hide cell . It ’s sit on the alloy holder we utilise for mount our sample – all those sparse scored lines might be lettuce from tweezers .
Gorgoroth and Mount Doom
The Lonely Mountain , place to nanodragons . The Earth’s surface of this sample is coated with a boisterous , hilly substance – likely make when the top level of my sample distribution ( a photoresist ) did n’t hold up well to a reactive blood plasma that I was take at the sample . One piece of the gravelly surface swelling up like a mountain above the rest , where it seems to bend space around itself . This phenomenon is lie with as charging , and happened when the mountain started accumulating enough negative charge from the scanning negatron irradiation that it come out repel the electron shaft of light itself .
Storm cloud
utmost finis - up of a single speck of detritus . It turns out that dust comes in all shapes and sizes , and this cloud - shaped piece is a peculiarity – I ’ve also found mickle and sail and chunky monsters . None of which are think to be there … but when I take my sampling out of the cleanroom to image them , I have to expect dust . This jot is small – the cake at the bottom of the image is only about 1/100 the width of a typical human hair .
Fear of the unknown
Bashful dust atom , regard under an negatron microscope . Since our electron microscope is n’t inside the cleanroom , it ’s hard to nullify the casual visit particle of junk . They appear randomly , like small-scale beings explore immense and eldritch landscapes . This one ’s microscopical , and endure on a well - scratched metal airfoil . In the scope is the side of a single piece of tape measure .
Route 66
I was pretty certain this was drop dead to be another doomed sample . For one , none of those little table and bumps – all formed of semiconductor laser stuff – were imagine to be there . It was all very interesting - looking , but it meant that some kind of dust had gotten on my sample and left its imprint while I was trying to form the optical maser - material wall .
Constellation
slight - plastic film outcome , consider under a microscope , imitate the night sky . What you see here is a flat aerofoil that has a few defects on it ( probably pieces of dust ) , cut through with a thin , transparent flick . According to the thickness of the film , you get dissimilar colors chew over back – this is the same phenomenon that make rainbow colors in sparse Georgia home boy bubbles . From the color , you’re able to see how the film mound up over the orbit that have shortcoming , producing tight - spaced band of color like a topographic function . There ’s no dye or pigments here – all the colors are from this soap bubble effect , relying on the interference of light moving ridge . This sort of paint - less color , called structural colour , can also be seen in iridescent bird plumage , pearls , opals , and many butterfly stroke wings . Kind of looks like a constellation of a unicorn head , to me .
Moonrise
A dream landscape painting , formed naturally by defects in a thin polymer film . This phenomenon is called Newton ’s Rings , and is the same sort of thin - film gist that makes soap bubbles iridescent .
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