This Cosmoquest Hangout is an absolute cracker! Live on air with a scanning electron microscope.

Scanning electron microscope picture of
a fly's eyes. (Screengrab

Courtesy of Cosmoquest, in this Google+ live Hangout recording you are taken on a guided tour of the nano world by Dr Jon Hillier, an electron microscopist in the Nanoscience & Technology Division at Argonne National Laboratory, US. As Cosmoquest describe the Hangout:

Jon’s research includes the development of state-of-the-art electron and ion beam instrumentation for materials and nanoscale research. He is most well known for his work in 3 dimensional Focused Ion Beam (FIB) tomography and complex sample fabrication for electron microscopy. His characterisation of diamond thin films has lead to the development of the artificial retina.

Watch some pretty amazing live on-air demonstrations of scanning electron microscopy.


The hosts are left speechless during the demos. Understandably so. One of the coolest Hangouts I've seen yet.

And Hillier promised to come back from a reprise with an even better microscope...