Video: The First Living Animal Ever Imaged With a Scanning Electron Microscope
Up Close With the First Living Animal Captured via Scanning Electron Microscopy via Not Exactly Rocket ScienceBombarded with electrons and sealed in a vacuum, the noble tick survived the ordeal You didn't wake up this morning thinking that a tick under a scanning electron microscope was going to be the coolest thing you saw all day, and yet here you are. After discovering some ticks alive inside a vacuum drying chamber, Yasuhito Ishigaki of Kanazawa Medical University decided to see if the hardy little bloodsuckers could stand up to the electron bombardment and vacuum conditions inside a scanning electron microscope (SEM). They could, and he's got the video to prove it. SEM rigs are great for capturing very fine detail of very small things, but they aren't easy on their subjects. They work by bombarding a sample with electrons and recording how they scatter to create an image....