Nano-Viewing Record Broken 65
smitty777 writes "Wired magazine reports on a new nanoviewing lens that is capable of viewing objects less than 100 nm across. Rather than attempting to use a 'perfect' lens, this technology uses a porous surface that actually scatters the light. By measuring how it is scattered and setting up lasers to compensate, they're able to 'steer' the light back to the right spot. The abstract from the Physical Review Letters reads: 'The smallest structures that conventional lenses are able to optically resolve are of the order of 200 nm. We introduce a new type of lens that exploits multiple scattering of light to generate a scanning nanosized optical focus. With an experimental realization of this lens in gallium phosphide we imaged gold nanoparticles at 97 nm optical resolution. Our work is the first lens that provides a resolution better than 100 nm at visible wavelengths.'"
Re:Light spectrum beneath 400nm? (Score:4, Interesting)
In simple terms, I think they're carefully aligning the incoming photons.
It's like trying to hit a target with a bullet that travels along a sine wave; you have to determine its phase at the point where it hits the target to figure out where it will end up.