Text 2 (Questions number 55-59)

    Microscopy is the technique used to view objects that can not be seen by the naked eye. The range can be anything between mm and nm. Microscopy has proven to be one of the most attractive and progressive research tools available to the scientific community, and remains at the forefront of research in many disciplines, from nanotechnology to live cell molecular imaging.

    Each advance in microscopic technique has provided scientists with new perspectives on the function of living organisms and the nature of matter itself. The invention of the visible-light microscope late in the sixteenth century introduced a previously unknown realm of single celled plants and animals. In the twentieth century, electron microscopes have provided direct views of viruses and minuscule surface structures. Now another type of microscope, one that utilize x-rays rather than light or electrons, offers a different way of examining tiny details, it should extend human perception still farther into the natural world.

    The dream of building an x-ray microscope dates to 1895, its development, however, was virtually halted in the 1940's because the development of the electron microscope was progressing rapidly. During the 1940's electron microscopes routinely achieved resolution better than that possible with a visible-light microscope, while the performa nce of x-ray microscopes resisted improvement. In recent years, however, interest in x-ray microscopes has revived, largely because of advances such as the development of new sources of x-ray illumination. As a result, the brightness available today is millions of times that of x-ray tubes, which, for most of the century, were the only available sources of soft x-rays.

    The new x-ray microscopes considerably improve on the resolution provided by optical microscopes. They can also be used to map the distribution of certain chemical elements. Some can form pictures in extremely short time; others hold the promise of s pecial capabilities such as three dimensional imaging. Unlike conventional electron microscopy, x-ray microscopy enables specimens to be kept in air and in water, which means that biological samples can be studied under conditions similar to their natural state. The illumination used, so-called soft x-rays in the wavelength range of twenty to forty angstroms (an angstrom is one ten-billionth of a meter), is a lso sufficiently penetrating to image intact biological cells in many cases. Because of the wavelength of the x-rays used, soft x-ray microscopes will never match the highest resolution possible with electron microscopes. Rather, their special properties will make possible investigations that will complement those performed with light- and electronbased instruments.

57. Why did it take so long to develop the x-ray microscope?