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An Anonymous Coward writes:

Ernst Abbe worked out in 1873 that even a perfect lens cannot separate details smaller than about half a wavelength of light, which is why a galaxy millions of light-years away photographs cleanly while a virus does not. The limit was not beaten by better glass. It was beaten two other ways: hold a probe closer to the surface than one wavelength and catch the evanescent field (near-field microscopy, ~6 nm lateral resolution demonstrated), or make fluorescent molecules blink one at a time so their centers can be found precisely (super-resolved fluorescence microscopy, 2014 Nobel Prize in Chemistry). Short writeup with sources:

https://telegra.ph/The-Near-Is-Blurrier-Than-the-Far-10-12 [telegra.ph]

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