Van Allen probes catch rare glimpse of supercharged radiation belt

This is an artist concept of accelerated electrons circulating in Earth's Van Allen radiation belts.

Our planet is nestled in the center of two immense, concentric doughnuts of powerful radiation: the Van Allen radiation belts, which harbor swarms of charged particles that are trapped by Earth's magnetic field. On March 17, 2015, an interplanetary shock -- a shockwave created by the driving force of a coronal mass ejection, or CME, from the sun -- struck Earth's magnetic field, called the magnetosphere, triggering the greatest geomagnetic storm of the preceding decade. And NASA's Van Allen Probes were there to watch the effects on the radiation belts.

One of the most common forms of space weather, a geomagnetic storm describes any event in which the magnetosphere is suddenly, temporarily disturbed. Such an event can also lead to change in the radiation belts surrounding Earth, but researchers have seldom been able to observe what happens. But on the day of the March 2015 geomagnetic storm, one of the Van Allen Probes was orbiting right through the belts, providing unprecedentedly high-resolution data from a rarely witnessed phenomenon. A paper on these observations was published in the Journal of Geophysical Research on Aug. 15, 2016.

Researchers want to study the complex space environment around Earth because the radiation and energy there can impact our satellites in a wide variety of ways -- from interrupting onboard electronics to increasing frictional drag to disrupting communications and navigation signals.

"We study radiation belts because they pose a hazard to spacecraft and astronauts," said David Sibeck, the Van Allen Probes mission scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, who was not involved with the paper. "If you knew how bad the radiation could get, you would build a better spacecraft to accommodate that."

Studying the radiation belts is one part of our efforts to monitor, study and understand space weather. NASA launched the twin Van Allen Probes in 2012 to understand the fundamental physical processes that create this harsh environment so that scientists can develop better models of the radiation belts. These spacecraft were specifically designed to withstand the constant bombardment of radiation in this area and to continue to collect data even under the most intense conditions. A set of observations on how the radiation belts respond to a significant space weather storm, from this harsh space environment, is a goldmine.

The recent research describes what happened: The March 2015 storm was initiated by an interplanetary shock hurtling toward Earth -- a giant shockwave in space set off by a CME, much like a tsunami is triggered by an earthquake.

Swelling and shrinking in response to such events and solar radiation, the Van Allen belts are highly dynamic structures within our planet's magnetosphere. Sometimes, changing conditions in near-Earth space can energize electrons in these ever-changing regions. Scientists don't yet know whether energization events driven by interplanetary shocks are common. Regardless, the effects of interplanetary shocks are highly localized events -- meaning if a spacecraft is not precisely in the right place when a shock hits, it won't register the event at all. In this case, only one of the Van Allen Probes was in the proper position, deep within the magnetosphere -- but it was able to send back key information.

The spacecraft measured a sudden pulse of electrons energized to extreme speeds -- nearly as fast as the speed of light -- as the shock slammed the outer radiation belt. This population of electrons was short-lived, and their energy dissipated within minutes. But five days later, long after other processes from the storm had died down, the Van Allen Probes detected an increased number of even higher energy electrons. Such an increase so much later is a testament to the unique energization processes following the storm.

"The shock injected -- meaning it pushed -- electrons from outer regions of the magnetosphere deep inside the belt, and in that process, the electrons gained energy," said Shri Kanekal, the deputy mission scientist for the Van Allen Probes at Goddard and the leading author of a paper on these results.

Researchers can now incorporate this example into what they already know about how electrons behave in the belts, in order to try to understand what happened in this case -- and better map out the space weather processes there. There are multiple ways electrons in the radiation belts can be energized or accelerated: radially, locally or by way of a shock. In radial acceleration, electrons are carried by low-frequency waves towards Earth. Local acceleration describes the process of electrons gaining energy from relatively higher frequency waves as the electrons orbit Earth. And finally, during shock acceleration, a strong interplanetary shock compresses the magnetosphere suddenly, creating large electric fields that rapidly energize electrons.

Scientists study the different processes to understand what role each process plays in energizing particles in the magnetosphere. Perhaps these mechanisms occur in combination, or maybe just one at a time. Answering this question remains a major goal in the study of radiation belts -- a difficult task considering the serendipitous nature of the data collection, particularly in regard to shock acceleration.

Additionally, the degree of electron energization depends on the process that energizes them. One can liken the process of shock acceleration, as observed by the Van Allen Probe, to pushing a swing.

"Think of 'pushing' as the phenomenon that's increasing the energy," Kanekal said. "The more you push a swing, the higher it goes." And the faster electrons will move after a shock.

In this case, those extra pushes likely led to the second peak in high-energy electrons. While electromagnetic waves from the shock lingered in the magnetosphere, they continued to raise the electrons' energy. The stronger the storm, the longer such waves persist. Following the March 2015 storm, resulting electromagnetic waves lasted several days. The result: a peak in electron energy measured by the Van Allen Probe five days later.

This March 2015 geomagnetic storm was one of the strongest yet of the decade, but it pales in comparison to some earlier storms. A storm during March 1991 was so strong that it produced long-lived, energized electrons that remained within the radiation belts for multiple years. With luck, the Van Allen Probes may be in the right position in their orbit to observe the radiation belt response to more geomagnetic storms in the future. As scientists gather data from different events, they can compare and contrast them, ultimately helping to create robust models of the little-understood processes occurring in these giant belts.

Read more at Science Daily

Piranhas With Human-Like Teeth Found in Michigan Lakes

Smile! Pacus use their disturbingly human-like teeth for cracking open seeds and nuts.

A South American fish with uncannily human-like chompers has been unexpectedly showing up on Michigan anglers' hooks.

The fish are red-bellied pacus (Piaractus brachypomus) and are piranha relatives, though their diet is mostly vegetarian. Pacus are popular with aquarium owners for their unusual square teeth that look remarkably human —rather disturbingly so, in fact. But recently, pacus have been sighted in places where they shouldn't be: Lake St. Clair and Port Huron in southeastern Michigan, where three pacus were caught during the month of July.

The pacus were almost certainly introduced into the lakes by former owners who kept them as pets, according to a statement released Aug. 9 by the Michigan Department of Natural Resources (DNR).

Pacus are native to the Amazon and Orinoco river basins and flood plains. Their flattened bodies resemble those of their sharp-toothed piranha cousins, but their own distinctive teeth are used for crushing seeds and nuts. Pacus can grow to be about 35 inches (89 centimeters) in length, and pet owners may be dismayed to find that their exotic pet can outgrow its tank, which can prompt them to release the fish in the wild, according to the DNR.

Warm temperatures are vital to the pacus' survival, so they are unlikely to become established as an invasive species in Michigan's seasonally cold waters. However, releasing pets in the wild is not only harmful to the animals and likely to result in their death, but could have severe implications for native wildlife and ecosystems, DNR officials said in the statement.

Pacus have been found in Michigan waters before, but this is the first time that people have caught three of them in one week, according to Nick Popoff, a biologist with the Fisheries Division at the DNR. Popoff told Live Science that it's possible the three fish came from a single tank that was dumped in a public access site.

"Pacus' temperature requirements are tropical, and Michigan is not a tropical state," Popoff said. "They're not going to be able to survive our winters, so we don't consider them invasive. We're concerned with this because it highlights the issue of pet owners releasing their pets into the wild."

Goldfish have also been released into Michigan lakes by their owners, but unlike the pacu, they survive year-round and are successfully breeding.

"We have reproducing populations of goldfish in Lake Erie and Lake St. Claire." Popoff explained. "They're an example of an aquarium disposal over time that has created a naturally reproducing population of non-native fish."

Read more at Discovery News

A.I. Learns to Replicate Human Handwriting

There was always that one kid in high school that could forge his mom's signature. Remember him? Sick and "get out of school early" notes.

Well that guy has some competition now.

Computer scientists at University College London have developed software that can analyze a piece of handwriting and then replicate it when writing new sentences, reports Future Timeline.

Oddly enough, the advance could help identify forgeries.

The program, called "My Text in Your Handwriting," uses a machine learning algorithm is built around glyphs -- which are basically the unique and specific ways that individual write certain characters. By analyzing a piece of writing, the software can learn what's consistent across the writer's style and then reproduce it.

In tests lead by Tom Haines, the scientists fed the algorithm sample texts from famous people, including Abraham Lincoln, Frida Kahlo and Arthur Conan Doyle.

Next, they wrote new sentences in the styles of these famous people and then asked people to distinguish between handwritten envelopes and ones created by the software. Watch the video below to learn more:

The computer-generated handwriting that fooled people up to 40 percent of the time.

Haines and his team think that such a system could give people who've lost the ability to write, including stroke victims, to write letters and cards to loved one.

It could also deconstruct handwritten notes to check for forgeries.

Read more at Discovery News

Purple Stubby Squid Charms Submersible Scientists

Meet the Stubby squid (Rossia pacifica), a toy-like cephalopod just spotted off the coast of California by scientists with Nautilus Live, an ongoing scientific exploration of the seafloor by the Ocean Exploration Trust.

It's found in the Northern Pacific, from Japan to Southern California and, while not new to science, it's a creature that draws a lot of attention. For obvious reasons!

They have eight small arms and two retractable tentacles. They'll burrow into the sand and wait for prey, with just their eyes sticking out. This one will dine largely on live shrimp it snares in its tentacles. Fully grown, they're about 2.36 inches long (6 centimeters) -- about 4.3 inches (11 centimeters) including arms and tentacles.

This cute fella was found about 2,950 feet (900 meters) below the surface, just minding its own business. Until, that is a remotely operated vehicle zoomed in for a closer look.

The accompanying video captures the scientists operating the vehicle as they react to the sight of this impossibly adorable seafloor critter.

From Discovery News

Schizophrenia emerged after humans diverged from Neanderthals

Schizophrenia vulnerability rose after the divergence of modern humans from Neanderthals, say author of a new report, suggesting that this supports the hypothesis that schizophrenia is a by-product of the complex evolution of the human brain.

Schizophrenia poses an evolutionary enigma. The disorder has existed throughout recorded human history and persists despite its severe effects on thought and behavior, and its reduced rates of producing offspring. A new study in Biological Psychiatry may help explain why-comparing genetic information of Neanderthals to modern humans, the researchers found evidence for an association between genetic risk for schizophrenia and markers of human evolution.

"This study suggests that schizophrenia is a modern development, one that emerged after humans diverged from Neanderthals," said John Krystal, Editor of Biological Psychiatry. "It suggests that early hominids did not have this disorder."

The cause of schizophrenia remains unknown, but researchers know that genetics play a significant role in the development. According to senior author Ole Andreassen from the University of Oslo in Norway and University of California, San Diego, some think that schizophrenia could be a "side effect" of advantageous gene variants related to the acquisition of human traits, like language and complex cognitive skills, that might have increased our propensity to developing psychoses.

Along with Andreassen, first authors Saurabh Srinivasan and Francesco Bettella, both from the University of Oslo, and colleagues looked to the genome of Neanderthals, the closest relative of early humans, to pinpoint specific regions of the genome that could provide insight on the origin of schizophrenia in evolutionary history.

They analyzed genetic data from recent genome-wide association studies of people with schizophrenia for overlap with Neanderthal genomic information. The analysis tells researchers the likelihood that specific regions of the genome underwent positive selection sometime after the divergence of humans and Neanderthals.

Regions of the human genome associated with schizophrenia, known as risk loci, were more likely to be found in regions that diverge from the Neanderthal genome. An additional analysis to pinpoint loci associated with evolutionary markers suggests that several gene variants that have undergone positive selection are related to cognitive processes. Other such gene loci are known to be associated with schizophrenia and have previously been considered for a causal role in the disorder.

"Our findings suggest that schizophrenia vulnerability rose after the divergence of modern humans from Neanderthals," said Andreassen, "and thus support the hypothesis that schizophrenia is a by-product of the complex evolution of the human brain."

From Science Daily

Brown dwarfs reveal exoplanets' secrets

Brown dwarfs are smaller than stars, but more massive than giant planets. As such, they provide a natural link between astronomy and planetary science. However, they also show incredible variation when it comes to size, temperature, chemistry, and more, which makes them difficult to understand, too. New work surveyed various properties of 152 suspected young brown dwarfs in order to categorize their diversity and found that atmospheric properties may be behind much of their differences.

Brown dwarfs are smaller than stars, but more massive than giant planets. As such, they provide a natural link between astronomy and planetary science. However, they also show incredible variation when it comes to size, temperature, chemistry, and more, which makes them difficult to understand, too.

New work led by Carnegie's Jacqueline Faherty surveyed various properties of 152 suspected young brown dwarfs in order to categorize their diversity and found that atmospheric properties may be behind much of their differences, a discovery that may apply to planets outside the solar system as well. The work is published by The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series.

Scientists are very interested in brown dwarfs, which hold promise for explaining not just planetary evolution, but also stellar formation. These objects are tougher to spot than more-massive and brighter stars, but they vastly outnumber stars like our Sun. They represent the smallest and lightest objects that can form like stars do in the Galaxy so they are an important "book end" in Astronomy.

For the moment, data on brown dwarfs can be used as a stand-in for contemplating extrasolar worlds we hope to study with future instruments like the James Webb Space Telescope.

"Brown dwarfs are far easier to study than planets, because they aren't overwhelmed by the brightness of a host star," Faherty explained.

But the tremendous diversity we see in the properties of the brown dwarf population means that there is still so much about them that remains unknown or poorly understood.

Brown dwarfs are too small to sustain the hydrogen fusion process that fuels stars, so after formation they slowly cool and contract over time and their surface gravity increases. This means that their temperatures can range from nearly as hot as a star to as cool as a planet, which is thought to influence their atmospheric conditions, too. What's more, their masses also range between star-like and giant planet-like and they demonstrate great diversity in age and chemical composition.

By quantifying the observable properties of so many young brown dwarf candidates, Faherty and her team -- including Carnegie's Jonathan Gagné and Alycia Weinberger -- were able to show that these objects have vast diversity of color, spectral features, and more. Identifying the cause of this range was at the heart of Faherty's work. By locating the birth homes of many of the brown dwarfs, Faherty was able to eliminate age and chemical composition differences as the underlying reason for this great variation. This left atmospheric conditions -- meaning weather phenomena or differences in cloud composition and structure -- as the primary suspect for what drives the extreme differences between objects of similar origin.

All of the brown dwarf birthplaces identified in this work are regions also host exoplanets, so these same findings hold for giant planets orbiting nearby stars.

Read more at Science Daily

Papuan Tribe Preserves Ancient Rite of Mummification

Cradling the centuries-old remains of his mummified ancestor, tribe leader Eli Mabel lays bare an ancient tradition that has all but vanished among the Dani people in the Papuan central highlands.

The tiny, blackened, shrunken figure he carries was Agat Mamete Mabel, the chieftain that ruled over this remote village in Indonesian Papua some 250 years ago.

Honored upon death with a custom reserved only for important elders and local heroes among the Dani people -- he was embalmed and preserved with smoke and animal oil.

Nine generations on and his descendant Eli Mabel is the current chieftain in Wogi village -- an isolated hamlet outside Wamena that can be reached only by hiking and canoe.

He said the exact age of Agat Mamete Mabel was not known, but told AFP this ancestor was the last of the village to receive such a funeral. Once common among his forebears, the ritual method of smoke embalming was no longer practiced, he explained.

Christian missionaries and Muslim preachers encouraged the tribespeople to bury the corpses, and the tradition has faded as the centuries drifted by.

But Mabel is determined to retain the ancient rites and rituals for future generations.

"We must protect our culture, including the ceremonies for the mummy, the way we treat it, and maintain and fire for it," the Dani tribesman told AFP.

The mummy, decorated with pig tusks slung around the torso, a feathered headpiece, and traditional penis gourd rests in a hut known as a "honai".

This wide domed, thatch-roofed hut is tended year round by a select few villagers who keep a fire burning to ensure the corpse remains dry and preserved.

The duty of caring for the mummy often falls to Mabel, he said. He spends many nights sleeping alone in the honai, ensuring no harm befalls his ancestor.

Read more at Discovery News

Mysterious Supernovas Explode Twice, Making Powerful Magnets

A mysterious kind of supernova that appears to explode twice may be giving birth to some of the most powerful magnets in the universe, a new study finds.

Supernovas are explosions that occur when certain types of stars run out of fuel and "die." These outbursts can briefly outshine all of the millions of other stars in their galaxies.

Recently, scientists detected a very rare class of supernova, known as superluminous supernovas. These star explosions are up to 100 times brighter than other supernovas. The superluminous variety account for less than a thousandth of all supernovas, and only about 30 examples have been studied well.

They are extremely bright and can be seen for up to a year but are incredibly rare, so [they] are difficult to find and measure," said study lead author Mathew Smith, an astrophysicist at the University of Southampton in England. "We don't yet know the physical origin of these cosmic explosions that can be seen out to the beginning of the universe; that's the main focus of current and future searches."

Mysteriously, previous research suggested that some superluminous supernovas appear to explode twice. Before their main explosions, each of these supernovas experience a spike in brightness that lasts a few days.

Now, Smith and his colleagues have analyzed such a "double-peaked" superluminous supernova from almost the moment it occurred, shedding light on its origins. In their new paper, they said most superluminous supernovas may actually be double-peaked.

The researchers discovered this superluminous supernova, named DES14X3taz, in 2014 by examining data from theDark Energy Survey. DES14X3taz is located about 6.4 billion light-years from Earth.

Using the Gran Telescopio Canarias, a telescope in Spain's Canary Islands, the team of astronomers carried out follow-up observations shortly after DES14X3taz was first detected. This helped the researchers to see how the supernova's temperature evolved over time.

The researchers saw that after the initial spike of brightness, the object rapidly cooled off. Another, more powerful burst of brightness followed.

The initial spike of brightness likely coincided with the dying star's ejection of a huge bubble of material into outer space. The star's mass was about 200 times that of the sun, and the mass of the bubble of expelled material was about equivalent to the sun's, the researchers estimated. This bubble of expelled material cooled rapidly as it grew, they said.

Following the initial spike in brightness, this supernova gave birth to a magnetar, the researchers said. Magnetars are among the most powerful magnets in the universe. They are a kind of neutron star, which is the leftover core of material in a dead massive star. To reach this conclusion about the magnetar birth, the researchers compared the data with several physical models of supernovas.

The explosion created by the magnetar's formation heated up the bubble expelled by the first explosion, leading to the second, more powerful burst of brightness, the researchers found.

However, the researchers said that their most surprising discovery was "not that the supernova had a double peak, but that there's significant evidence that most superluminous supernovae do, too," Smith told Space.com.

Read more at Discovery News

NASA's Fermi mission expands its search for dark matter

Dark matter, the mysterious substance that constitutes most of the material universe, remains as elusive as ever. Although experiments on the ground and in space have yet to find a trace of dark matter, the results are helping scientists rule out some of the many theoretical possibilities. Three studies published earlier this year, using six or more years of data from NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, have broadened the mission's dark matter hunt using some novel approaches.

"We've looked for the usual suspects in the usual places and found no solid signals, so we've started searching in some creative new ways," said Julie McEnery, Fermi project scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. "With these results, Fermi has excluded more candidates, has shown that dark matter can contribute to only a small part of the gamma-ray background beyond our galaxy, the Milky Way, and has produced strong limits for dark matter particles in the second-largest galaxy orbiting it."

Dark matter neither emits nor absorbs light, primarily interacts with the rest of the universe through gravity, yet accounts for about 80 percent of the matter in the universe. Astronomers see its effects throughout the cosmos -- in the rotation of galaxies, in the distortion of light passing through galaxy clusters, and in simulations of the early universe, which require the presence of dark matter to form galaxies at all.

The leading candidates for dark matter are different classes of hypothetical particles. Scientists think gamma rays, the highest-energy form of light, can help reveal the presence of some of types of proposed dark matter particles. Previously, Fermi has searched for tell-tale gamma-ray signals associated with dark matter in the center of our galaxy and in small dwarf galaxies orbiting our own. Although no convincing signals were found, these results eliminated candidates within a specific range of masses and interaction rates, further limiting the possible characteristics of dark matter particles.

Among the new studies, the most exotic scenario investigated was the possibility that dark matter might consist of hypothetical particles called axions or other particles with similar properties. An intriguing aspect of axion-like particles is their ability to convert into gamma rays and back again when they interact with strong magnetic fields. These conversions would leave behind characteristic traces, like gaps or steps, in the spectrum of a bright gamma-ray source.

Manuel Meyer at Stockholm University led a study to search for these effects in the gamma rays from NGC 1275, the central galaxy of the Perseus galaxy cluster, located about 240 million light-years away. High-energy emissions from NGC 1275 are thought to be associated with a supermassive black hole at its center. Like all galaxy clusters, the Perseus cluster is filled with hot gas threaded with magnetic fields, which would enable the switch between gamma rays and axion-like particles. This means some of the gamma rays coming from NGC 1275 could convert into axions -- and potentially back again -- as they make their way to us.

Meyer's team collected observations from Fermi's Large Area Telescope (LAT) and searched for predicted distortions in the gamma-ray signal. The findings, published April 20 in Physical Review Letters, exclude a small range of axion-like particles that could have comprised about 4 percent of dark matter.

"While we don't yet know what dark matter is, our results show we can probe axion-like models and provide the strongest constraints to date for certain masses," Meyer said. "Remarkably, we reached a sensitivity we thought would only be possible in a dedicated laboratory experiment, which is quite a testament to Fermi."

Another broad class of dark matter candidates are called Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs). In some versions, colliding WIMPs either mutually annihilate or produce an intermediate, quickly decaying particle. Both scenarios result in gamma rays that can be detected by the LAT.

Regina Caputo at the University of California, Santa Cruz, sought these signals from the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC), which is located about 200,000 light-years away and is the second-largest of the small satellite galaxies orbiting the Milky Way. Part of the SMC's appeal for a dark matter search is that it lies comparatively close to us and its gamma-ray emission from conventional sources, like star formation and pulsars, is well understood. Most importantly, astronomers have high-precision measurements of the SMC's rotation curve, which shows how its rotational speed changes with distance from its center and indicates how much dark matter is present. In a paper published in Physical Review D on March 22, Caputo and her colleagues modeled the dark matter content of the SMC, showing it possessed enough to produce detectable signals for two WIMP types.

"The LAT definitely sees gamma rays from the SMC, but we can explain them all through conventional sources," Caputo said. "No signal from dark matter annihilation was found to be statistically significant."

In the third study, researchers led by Marco Ajello at Clemson University in South Carolina and Mattia Di Mauro at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in California took the search in a different direction. Instead of looking at specific astronomical targets, the team used more than 6.5 years of LAT data to analyze the background glow of gamma rays seen all over the sky.

The nature of this light, called the extragalactic gamma-ray background (EGB) has been debated since it was first measured by NASA's Small Astronomy Satellite 2 in the early 1970s. Fermi has shown that much of this light arises from unresolved gamma-ray sources, particularly galaxies called blazars, which are powered by material falling toward gigantic black holes. Blazars constitute more than half of the total gamma-ray sources seen by Fermi, and they make up an even greater share in a new LAT catalog of the highest-energy gamma rays.

Some models predict that EGB gamma rays could arise from distant interactions of dark matter particles, such as the annihilation or decay of WIMPs. In a detailed analysis of high-energy EGB gamma rays, published April 14 in Physical Review Letters, Ajello and his team show that blazars and other discrete sources can account for nearly all of this emission.

"There is very little room left for signals from exotic sources in the extragalactic gamma-ray background, which in turn means that any contribution from these sources must be quite small," Ajello said. "This information may help us place limits on how often WIMP particles collide or decay."

Read more at Science Daily

Seeing the invisible: Visible light superlens made from nanobeads

Conceptual drawing of nanoparticle-based metamaterial solid immersion lens (mSIL) (b) Lab made mSIL using titanium dioxide nanoparticles (c) SEM image of 60 nm sized imaging sample (d) corresponding superlens imaging of the 60 nm samples by the developed mSIL.

Nanobeads are all around us- and are, some might argue, used too frequently in everything from sun-screen to white paint, but a new ground-breaking application is revealing hidden worlds.

A paper in Science Advances provides proof of a new concept, using new solid 3D superlenses to break through the scale of things previously visible through a microscope.

Illustrating the strength of the new superlens, the scientists describe seeing for the first time, the actual information on the surface of a Blue Ray DVD. That shiny surface is not as smooth as we think. Current microscopes cannot see the grooves containing the data- but now even the data itself is revealed.

Led by Dr Zengbo Wang at Bangor University, UK and Prof Limin Wu at Fudan University, China, the team created minute droplet-like lens structures on the surface to be examined. These act as an additional lens to magnify the surface features previously invisible to a normal lens.

Made of millions of nanobeads, the spheres break up the light beam. Each bead refracts the light, acting as individual torch-like minute beam. It is the very small size of each beam of light which illuminate the surface, extending the resolving ability of the microscope to record-breaking levels. The new superlens adds 5x magnification on top of existing microscopes.

Extending the limit of the classical microscope's resolution has been the 'El Dorado' or 'Holy Grail' of microscopy for over a century. Physical laws of light make it impossible to view objects smaller than 200 nm -- the smallest size of bacteria, using a normal microscope alone. However, superlenses have been the new goal since the turn of the millennium, with various labs and teams researching different models and materials.

"We've used high-index titanium dioxide (TiO2) nanoparticles as the building element of the lens. These nanoparticles are able to bend light to a higher degree than water. To explain, when putting a spoon into a cup of this material, if it were possible, you'd see a larger bend where you spoon enters the material than you would looking at the same spoon in a glass of water," Dr Wang says.

"Each sphere bends the light to a high magnitude and splits the light beam, creating millions of individual beams of light. It is these tiny light beams which enable us to view previously unseen detail."

Wang believes that the results will be easily replicable and that other labs will soon be adopting the technology and using it for themselves.

The advantages of the technology is that the material, titanium dioxide, is cheap and readily available, and rather than buying a new microscope, the lenses are applied to the material to be viewed, rather than to the microscope.

Read more at Science Daily