Why hasn't anyone tried to build a gamma-ray microscope yet?

[Fanghur]

I've taken several courses on microscopy and I was just wondering why it is that nobody has tried to make a microscope that uses gamma rays? If I'm not mistaken such a microscope would theoretically give much higher resolution and magnification than even an electron microscope, because the wavelength of an electron dwarfs the wavelength of a gamma ray (ie. gamma rays have much shorter wavelengths than electrons do). I mean I know you wouldn't be able to use it to study living organisms, but in principle why couldn't we build one?

[Mr Skeptic]

I'm pretty sure we've used gamma rays to study small things. Also, electrons are any wavelength you wish to accelerate them to, and they are much easier to accelerate.

[Moontanman]

Focusing gamma rays would be problem as well...

[Junkyardnut]

Allow me to point you to http://www.aip.org/history/heisenberg/p08b.htm

Hope this will be a very helpful dead-end for your quest !

[John Cuthber]

There are no gamma ray lenses.

[fertilizerspike]

Allow me to point you to http://www.aip.org/history/heisenberg/p08b.htm

Hope this will be a very helpful dead-end for your quest !

 

You're citing Heisenberg imagining a gamma ray microscope as proof of his "uncertainty principle"? That's basically what the piece you cited says, that Heisenberg imagined a gamma ray microscope imaging an electron and he found (shocker) that his imaginings fit precisely with his predictions. Eureka!!!

 

There are no gamma ray lenses.

 

Actually you're a little behind the times, it was demonstrated last year that silicon lenses can be used to focus gamma rays. Shocker!!!

[John Cuthber]

In one post you demand a sample of dark matter before you will believe in it.

Yet here, you are happy to cite a work that suggests that a gamma ray lens might be possible as evidence that such a lens exists.

 

Is that bases solely on your own preferences, or is there

another reason of it?

[Dekan]

Could we make a "Quark Microscope"? It would be like an "Electron Microscope", but with more resolving power.

[swansont]

Could we make a "Quark Microscope"? It would be like an "Electron Microscope", but with more resolving power.

 

You can't have a single quark owing to asymptotic freedom. Adding energy just creates new quark pairs.