ENST: Super-Resolution Microscopy Is Helping I.D.
The ability to see nanoscopic
details in cells is emphasizing
the impotence of Darwinism
“Resolution Revolution”
Intelligent Design, Now at the Atomic Level
by David Coppedge
Evolution News & Science Today, 1 December 2020
Never say never, because humans are clever. Physics teachers used to say that humans will never be able to see atoms through any microscope due to a fundamental barrier to resolution called the diffraction limit. But like the four-minute mile and the sound barrier, this record was made to be broken. Today, optical engineers are doing it. Individual atoms are coming into focus!
A review published in 2015 in Methods in Molecular Biology explained how the diffraction limit was breached:
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Conventional microscopy techniques, namely the confocal microscope or deconvolution processes, are resolution limited, ~250 nm, by the diffraction properties of light as developed by Ernst Abbe in 1873. This diffraction limit is appreciably above the size of most multi-protein complexes, which are typically 20–50 nm in diameter. In the mid 2000s, biophysicists moved beyond the diffraction barrier by structuring the illumination pattern and then applying mathematical principles and algorithms to allow a resolution of approximately 100 nm, sufficient to address protein subcellular colocalization questions. This “breaking” of the diffraction barrier, affording resolution beyond 200 nm is termed super resolution microscopy. More recent approaches include single molecule localization (such as PhotoActivated Localization Microscopy (PALM)/STochastic Optical Reconstruction Microscopy (STORM)) and point spread function engineering (such as STimulated Emission Depletion (STED) microscopy). [Emphasis added.]
Super-resolution microscopy has exploded since the diffraction limit was surpassed. Instead of 100nm, scientists are imaging objects at 10nm and smaller. Each new paper pushes the limit: down to 5nm, 4nm, 3nm, where individual domains of molecular machines can be seen….
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See also: “New light microscope can visualize molecules,” 25 April 2023.
I remember when I was at JPL around 2005 going to a poster session on new technologies, and hearing from a physicist how his team had invented a method of imaging individual molecules. I realized at the time how significant this was, and thought, ‘This is going to change everything’ in the debate between evolution and intelligent design. It already has (2019, 2023), and will continue to do so.