Microscopic to Astronomic

Compared to the unaided eye, we see 100 million times more with microscopes and 375.5 billion times more with telescopes.

Limitations in our sense of vision have driven us to invent and share new instruments of knowledge discovery. The unaided human eye can see a 100 μm object, about half the diameter of a human hair. Naked-eye stargazers can see a sufficiently bright celestial object up to 2.5 million light-years away. This was the extent of our vision until around 1600 , when glassmakers in the Netherlands started to experiment with shaping lenses. The results have given us astonishing powers to see millions and even billions of times more.

Microscopes

Zacharias Janssen developed the first microscope in 1595. It could magnify objects 3 to 10 times. By the 1800s magnification had improved to 1,000 times. A big jump occurred in 1931 with the Transmission Electron Microscope (TEM) that could magnify up to 1,000,000 times. TEMs can range in cost from $100,000 to $10,000,000 or more, depending on features. The most advanced TEM is located at Lawrence Berkeley National Labs and cost $27 million. This microscope can achieve a resolution of half the width of a hydrogen atom, making it the world's most powerful microscope in existence.

The Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) developed in 1937 had lower magnification (~100,000×) but could produce three-dimensional images. From the 1980s to the present, Cryo-Electron Microscopy (Cryo-EM) increased magnification up to 5,000,000× and Scanning Probe Microscopes (AFM, STM) up to ~100,000,000×.

However, magnification is less meaningful unless paired with resolution, since empty magnification yields no useful detail. For true improvement, resolution is critical.

The light microscopes of the 1800s could see 500x more at 0.2 μm. In the 1930s electron microscopes improved resolution to 0.05 nm, an increase to 2,000,000x. Today’s Cryo-EM/Atomic Microscopes have a resolution of 0.001 nm, which is 100 million× over the unaided human eye.

Telescopes

Hans Lippershey is credited as the inventor of the first telescope around 1608. His instrument could magnify 3x. After learning of the innovation the following year Galileo built his own version and increased magnification to 30x, yielding a 10x improvement in one year. Telescopes have continued to improve in light-gathering power and resolution. In the 1700s and 1800s, innovations by Newton and others improved both of these factors. The Herschel Reflector in 1789 had 20 times better resolution and over 1,000 times better light-gathering power over the Galileo design. The Great Dorpat Refractor built by Joseph Fraunhofer and completed in 1824 was the first modern, achromatic, refracting telescope. While the Herschel had a larger aperture, the Dorpat had much higher quality lenses yielding sharper and more measurable images.

The Hooker telescope was built in 1917 and offered 3x resolution and 105x improvement in light-gathering over the Dorpat. The next major leap was the Hubble in 1990. As a space-based telescope 340 miles above the earth’s atmosphere it was 10x sharper and more stable than earth-based counterparts. The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), launched in 2021, has a much larger mirror (6.5m vs 2.4m), giving it vastly greater light-gathering power and is optimized for the infrared spectrum.

The Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) is scheduled to go online in 2030. Compared to the JWST, the ELT is 6× larger, giving it dramatically higher light-gathering power for ground-based observations. The ELT will achieve 14× sharper resolution (0.005 arcsec vs JWST's 0.07), especially using adaptive optics. The JWST maintains the edge in overall precision due to its space-based stability and optimized infrared systems, but ELT will excel it in spectroscopy, exoplanet imaging, and detailed structure of distant galaxies.

From the unaided human eye to the ELT, angular resolution will be 12,000 times better and light-gathering power will be 31 million times better. This gives the ELT a combined observational capability approximately 372.5 billion times greater than the unaided human eye. This staggering leap reflects advances in both resolution and light-gathering power—enabling us to study the universe in ways unimaginable just a few centuries ago.

Microscopes and telescopes are instruments of knowledge discovery. There’s never been a better time to be alive if you want to zoom in and look at an individual 0.05 nanometer atom or zoom out and look at the edge of the universe some 46.5 billion light-years away from Earth.

Learn more about our infinitely bountiful planet at superabundance.com. We explain and give hundreds of examples why more people with freedom means much more resource abundances for everyone in our book, Superabundance, available at Amazon.

Gale Pooley is a Senior Fellow at the Discovery Institute, an Adjunct Scholar at the Cato Institute, and a board member at Human Progress.