All language subtitles for Secrets.of.Size.Atoms.to.Supergalaxies.S01E01.WEBRip.x264-ION10

On scales far beyond human
perception

there are strange beasts...

..exquisite palaces...

..wondrous landscapes.

Some just a few thousandths
of a millimetre long.

Others dominate
the vast expanses of the cosmos.

Thanks to ground-breaking
new technologies,

I'm setting out to explore these
hidden worlds for the first time.

You're looking at the craters
and bumps and hills

on the skin of bacteria.

Mind-blowing to look at that.

Each one of these dots is a galaxy.

We have an instrument here that
allows you to look at an atom.

We can block the Covid-19
virus itself. Yeah.

And at the tiniest
and the largest scales,

I'll see how physics
has bizarre consequences.

My journey will take me to
the frontiers of modern science,

revealing our latest discoveries and
our biggest unanswered questions.

This is the story
of how the universe works

at scales we can't normally see,

from nanoparticles,
to galactic superclusters.

These are the very first images ever
recorded of the microscopic world.

They appeared
in a book called Micrographia,

written by the 17th century
scientist Robert Hooke,

using the first microscopes.

Even at this magnification,

they seem so unfamiliar.

With Micrographia,
three-and-a-half centuries ago,

Hooke started us off
on a voyage of discovery,

into the universe
at ever-smaller scales.

As we began to see
the microscopic world,

we realised that it's very different
from our own.

These tiny insects have evolved
extraordinary adaptations

to navigate the world
at scales we can barely imagine,

because, when you're this small,

the laws of physics
have unexpected consequences.

This is a type of wasp
called Megaphragma,

one of the smallest
flying insects in the world.

It's just a few tenths
of a millimetre long,

some five or ten times
smaller than a flea.

It has wings like paddles..

..and flies in an unusual way.

That's because air feels
very different to it

than it does to us. We're barely
aware of the air around us

as we move through it.

And that's because of
the science of air resistance.

Take a golf ball
and a ping-pong ball.

It's easier to throw a golf ball
than a ping-pong ball.

They both have the same surface area

and so feel the same air resistance.

But the ping-pong ball is lighter,

with less momentum and struggles
to push through the air.

Megaphragma is like
a tiny ping-pong ball,

with little momentum
for its surface area,

so, to it, the air
feels more like a liquid

and it's evolved its unusually
shaped wings to swim through it.

If you were to make this
the size of a human,

then it'd be barely able
to move its wings,

let alone use them to fly.

Yet, it's so successively adapted to
the world in which it exists that,

in recent years, entomologists
have found them all over the world,

from Africa to the Pacific
to South America,

even in the woods outside London.

When we look at even tinier objects,

ten times smaller than Megaphragma,

we come to the scale
of a typical animal cell.

As we increase magnification,

the laws of physics
become ever more strange.

Professor Susan Anderson
at the University of Nottingham

uses powerful optical microscopes

to study human heart cells.

So, what is it we're seeing there?

So, this is the sort of detail
that we get in a light microscope.

We have lots of
individual cells here,

so we can see individual cells.

In each you can see nuclei.
So these are the nuclei.

The little bright spots
are the nucleoli.

This is the edge of the cell,
and then the cytoplasm of the cell,

you can't really see
any detail inside.

So, why is it
that you're looking at these?

The useful thing about this
is that we can see dynamic cells,

so the cells that we're looking at
here are human heart muscle cells.

So we can actually see them beating.

Oh, wow, right, yes. Yeah.

Seeing them beat in such detail

means scientists can begin
to understand why they go wrong.

You can see the nucleus, you can
see the outline of the cell here.

You can see lots of them beating
at about 30 beats per minute,

which is about half the rate
of a human heart.

They're from a living heart?

It would be difficult to do that
ethically so what we do is

we obtain stem cells
from human skin.

We reprogram the human skin cells
back to stem cells

and then we direct them down
a differentiation pathway

to being muscle cells

and we can obviously see
that they are contracting

and beating like
a heart muscle cell.

What's actually happening here?

The cytoplasm contains
lots of contractile filaments

and they're shortening and
lengthening so that the cell beats.

There's a whole community of cells
here that are talking to each other

and they're passing that signal
from cell to cell

and they're beating on mass.
How does it make you feel

when you're looking at
these living cells? I love them.

They've got personality. You know,
they do what they want.

If the light here is too bright
they will just move,

they will just walk away.
They're very entertaining.

Microscopes are key
to understanding cells,

because right across
the living world,

they're tiny compared
to most everyday objects.

For instance, a 200-tonne blue whale

and a tiny Megaphragma are both made
of cells that are similar in size,

roughly between 100th
and a 10th of a millimetre across.

Why are cells this size?

The answer lies in the fact
that in certain crucial ways,

small things are much more effective

at interacting with
the outside world than big things.

Here is a lump of titanium.
It's a very reactive metal,

and I'm going to try and burn it.

Nothing.

But here is also titanium

that has been crushed down
into a powder.

Powder titanium
has far more of its surface,

relative to its volume,
exposed to the air,

so it's got much more access
to the oxygen in the air

to help it burn.

This applies to cells, too.

Cells absorb nutrients
and oxygen from the outside.

Being small and, therefore,

having a large
surface area to volume ratio,

means they can do this very
effectively.

If they were significantly larger,

they wouldn't be able to take in
what they need to survive.

Ultimately, though, there's
a limit to how small they can be.

Cells are full of stuff -

the nucleus, mitochondria,
ribosomes -

so it's a balance between
making them small enough

to maximise their
surface area to volume ratio,

yet big enough for their parts
to perform their function.

And their shape is crucial, too.

For instance, some cells have found
a way to increase surface area

without changing volume.

The cells in the walls
of our digestive tract

absorb the nutrients needed
to sustain our entire body

through their surface,

so this surface needs to be
as large as possible.

How do they do this?

How can cells maximise
their surface to volume ratio

without getting any smaller?

Well, imagine this balloon
is one of those cells.

How can I increase its surface area

without making it
significantly smaller? Well...

..I can give it fingers.

I've calculated these five fingers
increase the surface area

of this rubber glove by about 50%

and, remarkably, evolution has
adopted precisely this strategy.

Welcome to my digestive tract.

These protuberances
are called microvilli.

They're each about a
1,000th of a millimetre long,

but just a few molecules wide,

and there are millions of them.
They stick out from the cells,

dramatically increasing
their surface area,

and therefore their ability
to absorb nutrients.

Of course, the real thing
is rather more impressive.

Scientists have calculated that,
because of the microvilli,

our intestines have increased their
surface area by up to 15 times.

Modern optical microscopes
have uncovered a strange world

just a few thousandths
of a millimetre in scale.

A world very different
from our own.

All revealed by a device that is
essentially remarkably simple.

This is a modern but pretty basic
compound microscope,

and it works on the same principles
as Robert Hooke's microscope

from 400 years ago.
It's so simple, really,

because you just have two lenses,
one in front of the other,

and adjust them until you get
this sharp, magnified image.

The second lens multiplies
the magnification of the first.

There is, however, a fundamental
problem with optical microscopes.

As we increase magnification,

images get more and more blurry.

This is because light is a wave,

so objects which are smaller
than its wavelength

are impossible to see clearly,

which means
optical microscopes hit a wall

at about 1,000th of a millimetre.

So the next step downwards

means ditching light entirely

and finding something else
to see with,

like tiny subatomic particles.
Electrons.

I've found a bit of old technology,

something older viewers
might recognise.

I've taken the back off
this old TV set,

so what you can see here
is called a cathode-ray tube.

This bit, the cathode,
boils off electrons

which are then accelerated
in a vacuum

to hit the phosphorous screen
at the front.

Now, ordinarily on a TV set,

the electron beam scans across
the whole surface of the screen

to produce the picture.
But I've rigged this now

so that it produces just a single,
narrow beam of electrons

forming a spot in the middle.

Now, because electrons
are negatively charged,

they're affected
by a magnetic field.

In fact, that's how we control
the direction of the beam.

And to show that, I've got a small
magnet at the end of this stick,

which I can use to distort

and move the direction of the beam.

In fact, you can see
it's produced three spots.

That's because there are
three electron beams,

because this is a colour TV.

Now I've got it working normally.

The electron beam is scanning across
the whole screen

to produce the full picture.

But I can still distort
this picture using my magnet.

So, if magnets can be used
to control and direct

the path of an electron beam,

they can also be used
to focus a beam of electrons,

in the same way that a glass lens

can be used to focus
a beam of light.

And this means that we can
use electrons

to make an electron microscope.

This is a modern electron
microscope and, in many ways,

it resembles Robert Hooke's optical
microscope from 400 years ago.

But this one uses
a beam of electrons,

just like in the back
of that old TV set.

Here's where the electron beam
is generated.

Electromagnetic lenses
focus the beam here.

This is where the object is placed.

More lenses here magnify the image
thousands of times.

And this is a screen
which turns the electron image

into something we can see.

With microscopes like this,

scientists were suddenly able
to see objects hundreds,

even thousands of times smaller than
they'd ever been able to before.

We could see tiny details
on the bodies of insects

and the machinery within cells
that made them function.

And then we came face-to-face
with one of our deadliest enemies.

This is an infectious
bronchitis virus.

And these are common cold viruses.

On them, you can see
something strange,

a kind of halo
surrounding the virus.

They were, in fact, tiny spikes,

each one just 100 millionth
of a metre across,

and they gave the virus
a crown shape.

So they named this
new class of viruses

after the corona of the sun.

These are all coronaviruses.

In 2020, electron microscopes
helped to identify a new virus -

SARS-CoV-2, or Covid-19.

Professor Pippa Hawes
studies viruses like Covid-19

for the Pirbright Institute.

How have electron microscopes
allowed us to understand Covid-19?

They've been crucial because
they've allowed us to investigate

the structure of the virus,
so we can actually identify it.

So here we have
the Covid-19 virus itself. Yeah.

We can see the spike protein very,
very clearly here,

around the outside of the virus.

And inside is the viral RNA.

Like all viruses, Covid needs to
hijack another cell to reproduce.

What does the virus do
inside the cell?

It takes over the cell machinery.

The RNA gets placed inside
the cytoplasm of the cell.

This RNA is read
by the cellular machinery

and it's translated
into viral proteins

that the virus is using
in order to replicate.

So, by giving it its RNA,

the virus is basically
reprogramming the cell

to get it to do its bidding.
Yes, exactly.

Incredibly, we can now see
exactly how this happens.

What are we looking at here? Where's
the cell and where's the virus?

The outside of the cell is outside
of our field of view. Oh, OK, right.

Yeah. So this is zooming in now
on an infected cell.

These are parts of the cell
that the virus has taken over

and formed into these
double-membrane vesicles.

So, these vesicles, then, are like
the viruses' nest that it builds,

to make a home for itself
so that it can replicate?

Yes, exactly.
It's sometimes called a factory.

It's where it produces more copies
of the viral proteins,

it produces more of the RNA

and where it all comes together
in the new viruses.

And can we see the individual
viruses? Yes, if we go...

Ooh.

Here, these two are viruses

that are actually budding
into this vesicle,

so these are forming viruses.

Sneaky. Yes!
And so, understanding this,

I mean, does it allow us,
then, to combat Covid-19?

We need to know
how the virus infects,

how it replicates and how it leaves,

which would help with antiviral
treatments to prevent the disease.

Seeing things at this scale
has revealed

an incredible new world
to scientists.

They could see and begin to
understand how genetics worked

by seeing single chromosomes.

They could watch a white blood cell
attacking an infection.

And they could now see
beyond the living world,

deep into the materials
that surround us.

How cracks move through metals.

Then, in 1991,
a group in Japan saw this -

strange shapes forming
at the end of a sparking filament.

Ten times smaller than a virus.

They were carbon nanotubes,

each a long cylinder

whose walls were just
a single carbon atom thick.

And they had unexpected properties,

which has led to an explosion
of fascinating new materials.

This is one of the blackest
materials in the world.

See, it might look to you
like a flat black square

but, in fact,
if you look at it side on,

or even at the back, you can see
it's got contours, it's got dents.

And yet, looking at it face on,

there's nothing,
just pure blackness.

Now, normally when we see objects,

light bounces off of them
into our eyes

at different wavelengths
and different angles

so we can see colour and shape. But
this is like a Harry Potter spell.

Light falls on the surface
and then just disappears forever.

What's perhaps most surprising

is that this paint
is made of nanotubes.

The paint, called Vantablack,

is the invention of nanotechnology
scientist Ben Jensen.

So it just looks like
a black surface here,

but talk me through
what it looks like if you zoom in.

So, if you imagine
a forest of trees,

but the trees are thousands
of metres tall

and they're all straight
and they're all equally spaced.

So light comes in, photons come in,

and they effectively bounce
between the trees

and then they're absorbed
after a number of bounces.

So, as you can see on here,

it looks like a very,
very thick, lush carpet.

So light coming in gets in between
the nanotubes and bounces around

and is eventually absorbed
into the substrate.

It looks like a brush. Yes, exactly.

I want to get across to you just
how black this material is.

This card has been painted
with the blackest

commercially available paint.

It's called Black 3.0.

And, yeah, it looks very black.

But put it alongside the Vantablack,

and if I shine a light on them,

you can see the paint
just looks grey in comparison.

And even more impressive,

if I make an angle so that
the light bounces off the surface

and hopefully into the camera,

you can see that this paint
looks a lot brighter

because the light
has been reflected.

But if I do the same thing
with the Vantablack,

you should see no difference at all.

All the light is being absorbed.
None of it is reflected.

What is it useful for? So its main
uses are in satellite systems,

for controlling
stray light from the sun,

the moon and the Earth
when you're looking out at stars.

It's also used for calibrating
infrared cameras

that look at the Earth for global
warming studies. And terrestrially,

it's used to protect cars
with autonomous driving modes

from sunlight
entering the camera systems

and causing ghosting
and loss of signal.

For me,
this is an entirely unexpected

and surprising property of nanotubes
and, more importantly,

this is nanotechnology that
we can see. Or, rather, not see.

Glimpsing tiny nanotubes
was impressive,

but could we go even further?

By the 1980s, scientists were
trying to see ever smaller things,

using a completely different
approach.

They wondered if they could
see by feeling.

Basically, the idea was
to mimic the way the needle

on an old record player works.

A stylus passes along a groove
on a record

and the tiny bumps
vibrate the needle,

making music.

MUSIC PLAYS

MUSIC STOPS

But, of course, the tip
of a record player stylus

is far too big to feel something
as small as an atom.

But then, in 1982, two scientists -

Heinrich Rohrer and Gerd Binnig -

had an ingenious idea.

They put a thin metal spike
into a corrosive liquid.

Using electrical currents,

they slowly dissolved away
the tip of the spike

so that just a very thin needle
of metal remained.

Its tip was just
a few atoms in diameter.

But how could this needle see?

One idea was to harness
an unusual force of nature.

This is a gecko.

Its feet stick to the glass
using a tiny attractive force

called the van der Waals force.

Van der Waals forces exist
because of a rather quirky aspect

of atoms and molecules.

Think of an atom as a tiny
positively charged nucleus

surrounded by a cloud
of negatively charged electrons.

But, crucially,
these electron clouds aren't static,

they fluctuate in shape,
often randomly.

So the clouds can become lopsided,

with more electrons on one side
than on the other.

Because opposite charges attract,

the negative end of one molecule

is pulled towards
the positive end of another.

The force that an individual atom
feels is, of course, minuscule.

But these effects can add up.

And this, in turn, means that
the molecules on the surface

of an object can sometimes

feel pulled towards the molecules
on the surface of a nearby object.

And that's what the gecko
is taking advantage of.

A gecko's feet are covered
with billions of tiny structures

called spatulae.

When these press against the glass,

they flatten out,
creating a huge surface area.

Billions of atoms
are now in contact.

Then the tiny van der Waals forces

combine and hold the gecko in place.

And this was one of the forces

Binnig and Rohrer
believed they could harness.

When a tiny stylus -

and remember, its tip
is just a few atoms wide -

approaches atoms on the surface
of the material,

this is when the van der Waals
forces come into play.

Just like the spatulae
on the foot of a gecko

feels an attractive force between it
and the molecules on the surface

of the glass, so the stylus
feels a force pulling it towards

or pushing it away from the atoms
as it passes over the surface.

Measuring minuscule forces
like these can paint a picture

of the surface at the tiniest scale.

This is a modern
atomic force microscope.

Dr Georgina Benn is using it

to understand
one of our deadliest enemies.

I'm going to be imaging E coli,

which are a type of bacteria.

So, with a normal microscope, we
could look at just the bacteria.

But we need our atomic force
microscope to be able to see

the details on the surface.

Why are we looking at
the surface of E coli?

So, E coli are really good
at resisting antibiotics

because they have this extra
protective layer

around the outside, and we want to
know how the protective layer

is arranged so that we can help
people design antibiotics

that can get through the protective
layer more efficiently.

So this is the full cell?
The full bacteria? Yeah.

So you can sort of start to see
features on the surface.

And these are already well below
optical microscopy kind of sizes.

Right. My scan's going to be
500 nanometres wide.

So we're now looking at the surface
of the bacteria? Yes. Yes.

This is really impressive.

What we're looking at here
is bacteria skin

and, you know, you're looking at
the craters and bumps

and hills on the skin of bacteria,

to find these weak spots
that we can attack with antibiotics.

Each one of these black spots
is a hole on the bacteria,

which is about three millionths
of a millimetre wide.

These are the holes
that let water and nutrients

in and out of the cell. Right.

So we're looking at how they're
arranged, relative to each other.

And what's interesting is that

we've got this really tight lattice
of pores.

And then sometimes there are these
gaps in your lattice.

So those are the weak spots?
We don't know. Oh, OK.

So we want to know...
That's, like, a next question -

why these are important, why they
would be there in the first place?

So we know that some kind of patches
will make the membrane weaker.

And some of them will not.

So, if you could get
the bacteria to mutate

so that it generates these weak
spots... Yeah, or maybe...

..then you can attack it?
Yes, or maybe get a drug

that will make these weak spots,
and then we could apply antibiotic.

With the atomic force microscope,

we began to see more detail
of the world than ever before.

But it had its limitations.

They are most effective at seeing
features on a flat surface.

But atoms also connect up
in three dimensions,

often forming very complicated
shapes which, in turn,

affects their behaviour.

How, then, can we see these shapes?

Remember how visible light has a
limit because of its wavelength?

Well, it turns out
there's another form of light

which has a much, much smaller
wavelength.

X-rays.

Crucially,
X-rays have very short wavelength

when compared to visible light. Now,
the wavelengths of visible lights

are just under
a millionth of a metre

but the wavelengths of X-rays

are typically
several thousand times shorter,

at around a tenth
of a billionth of a metre.

But there are many differences.

Our eyes can't detect X-rays.

More importantly, they pack a punch.

X-rays contain much more energy
than rays of visible light.

The intense energy of X-rays
enables them to pass unhindered

through soft tissue,
like flesh and blood,

which is as transparent to X-rays
as glass is to visible light.

The larger atoms that make up
our bones do stop X-rays,

so when you see an image like this,

you're literally seeing
an X-ray shadow,

cast by your bones
on photographic paper.

This begs the question,

can X-rays, which have
such short wavelengths,

be used to see things that are
just too small for visible light?

The first hints that this
might be possible

came in the early 20th century.

Scientists noticed that when they
shone X-rays through crystals,

they produced weird spots
arranged in patterns.

These images may not
look like much,

but think of them as a kind of code.

And by crackling it,
you can deduce the way the atoms

in the crystal are arranged.

This process of turning images
like these into an understanding

of how substances are structured
down at the atomic scale

is known as X-ray crystallography.

For a sense of how
X-ray crystallography works,

let's say each of these
Christmas trees

represents one of the atoms
that makes up the crystal.

To keep it simple, let's say
they're all arranged in neat rows,

just like these trees.

What's important is that
the wavelength of the X-rays

striking the crystal is about
the same as the distance

between the rows of atoms, or the
rows of trees in our analogy.

Imagine an X-ray
reflecting off the surface

and the layer beneath.

The beam that travels down
to the next layer

has a longer journey,
and that is key.

If the waves are now out of step

and the peak of one coincides
with the trough of the other,

they then combine and cancel out.

But if they're in step,

the peaks combine,

making a larger wave
and a bright dot on the screen.

By carefully measuring

the angle at which
the X-rays strike the crystal,

where the dots appear,
where they disappear,

you can deduce the structure
of the crystal.

By decoding images like this,

scientists in the early 20th century
were able to deduce

the structures of simple crystals,
like rock salt.

The atoms are arranged
at each corner of a cube

and the cubes repeat
to form a 3D lattice.

Most importantly, it meant
we now knew the distance

between the atoms. It's a third
of a billionth of a metre.

But for me, the story
of X-ray crystallography

really comes into its own

because of one of the great heroes
of British science -

Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin.

At Cambridge and Oxford
in the 1930s and '40s,

Hodgkin became fascinated
by X-ray crystallography

and she quickly established herself
as one of the leading researchers.

Her first big challenge
came during the Second World War

and her work on penicillin.

Scientists had already noticed
that the newly discovered penicillin

had incredible
antibacterial properties.

It could stop infections
in their tracks,

literally bringing patients
back from the brink of death.

Now in the throws of war,
understanding it and producing it

in quantity was more important
than ever.

But penicillin was still a mystery,

with a handful of atoms arranged
in an unknown structure.

So Hodgkin set her laboratory
a challenge -

use X-ray crystallography
to learn its structure.

Georgina Ferry is a science writer
and biographer of Dorothy Hodgkin.

Tell me about penicillin.

What was so difficult about
understanding its structure?

The structure was unknown
and, naturally,

the organic chemists
all came to Dorothy and said

would she like to have a go at this?
The first problem with it was that

it doesn't make terribly
good crystals.

These are not ideal for putting
into the X-ray apparatus.

It took a while before they managed
to get a version of penicillin

that she was able to get
a good image from. That image...

..looks like this.

These are spots on photographic film
that have been made by X-rays

coming out of the crystal
and hitting the photographic film.

The dots are at different
intensities. Some of them

are very black, there's some
down here that are very faint.

And what she had to do
was carry out a complicated

mathematical calculation,

which then enabled her
to begin to understand

where there was
what's known as density

in the molecule and in the crystal.

And density means there's an atom
there. And the final stage

once you've done all those
calculations, is to...

..to...essentially
draw a contour map.

This represents
a slice through the molecule

and the numbers that are
written down

represent the density
of the electrons.

And what she's done is join up
areas of equivalent density,

and that shows you that's a place
where there's an atom,

because there's a lot of
intensity there.

We're looking at a 2D picture here.

So how did Hodgkin then
go to the full 3D structure?

What you want to do
is take a number of slices,

stack those one above the other,
and that'll show you

the three dimensional structure
of the molecule.

So, you can see, what we've got here
is a stack of Perspex sheets

of equal distances apart.

And on each sheet, you've got
the contour lines drawn,

as we were looking at before. Mm.

And if you're looking down
from the top,

you can see the three dimensional
structure.

This is the structure of penicillin

that Hodgkin came up with
after some four years of research.

These are the carbon atoms,

and they're connected by
chemical bonds to other atoms.

Oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, sulphur.

But it's this section here

that explains
its incredible efficacy.

It's called a beta-lactam ring

and it seems to give penicillin
its wondrous ability.

It binds to a part of the cell wall
of most bacteria,

killing them dead.

Understanding how penicillin works
was a revolution in medicine.

Hodgkin's work spawned
a generation of new antibiotics,

effective against
many aggressive bacteria,

saving millions of lives.

And these techniques,
still widely used today,

famously went on to unlock
the structure of DNA.

Despite the achievements
of X-ray crystallography,

it was still an indirect method
of seeing,

and only worked for crystals.

To see even smaller things
would require something else.

It seemed electron microscopes
held the most potential,

but they had a huge
technical problem.

Their electromagnetic lenses

were fundamentally different
from glass ones.

One of the most common problems
that affects lenses

is called spherical aberration.

You see, the way lenses work
is that they bend the light

that travels through them.
But the amount of bending

depends on which part of the lens
the light travels through.

So, when I try to focus the sun,
for instance,

I can never quite focus to a point.

Which means,
at high magnifications especially,

parts of the image will always blur.

Electron microscope lenses
are exactly the same,

they also suffer
from spherical aberration.

And at high magnification,

the blurring was making
the images unusable.

Now, for glass lenses,
this issue can be minimised.

You add a second lens,
a concave lens,

which corrects for the first one,

giving us a much sharper point.

But this solution doesn't work
with electron microscopes.

The lenses of electron microscopes
are fundamentally different

from glass ones. There simply is
no equivalent of a concave lens.

The physics of electrons and
electromagnetic fields forbids it.

So it seemed
that electron microscopes

would always suffer from blurriness

at very high levels
of magnification.

The question was whether we could
delve deeper to see even smaller.

Well, the next breakthrough
that changed everything

took place here in Germany.

Two teams of headstrong scientists
started to question the orthodoxy.

There were three in Germany -

Theoretician Harald Rose,

experimentalist Max Haider,

material scientist Knut Urban -

and an American team
led by Ondrej Krivanek.

Everybody expected us to fail,

and so we knew we could
only exceed expectations.

Each stubbornly believed
that they could somehow overturn

the established prevailing science

and make an electron microscope
that could see more.

Perhaps even atoms.

Was it a big challenge, then,
to persuade the science world

that here was something that was
going to change the field?

The science world, at that time,
had essentially given up

to have aberration-corrected
electron optics.

They decided that hardware
aberration correction

will be unthinkable.
They said it was impossible?

That it was impossible.
We had three different people.

Theoretician, experimentalist
and material scientists,

and I think this three together,

that was just a point
for its success.

Their approach used
multiple electron magnets,

multipoles to distort the image,

squeezing out the worst
of the aberration.

Then a second lens
reformed the image,

now almost aberration free. But
getting it right was challenging.

It would require sophisticated
arrangements of multipoles,

sensitive cameras
and powerful computers.

To bring it back again.

For years, they struggled
to get their new lenses to work,

and the rest of the scientific
community remained sceptical.

I had a lovely comment
from a professor at Stanford

who told me, "Ondrej,
you're burying your career."

But then, in June 1997,

their stubbornness
began to pay off.

And soon they caught glimpses of
the building blocks of all matter

with unprecedented clarity.

Here's a typical image
without aberration correction.

Now watch as it's added in.

The white blurs resolve
into two clear dots,

each one a single atom of silicone.

Finally, you could see atoms.

This was a real jump in innovation.

This was a real paradigm change.

What was it like when you saw
those first images?

Seeing is believing,

and the mission impossible
was not impossible.

They had achieved
a scientific miracle.

It was like if you have a huge fog.

But suddenly, the fog goes.

Suddenly, you see everything.

A new kind of electron microscope.

It was brilliant.
It was so unbelievable.

And it's the most important effect
of aberration correction.

By 2020, they'd gone
from academic outcasts

to world-renowned scientists.

The images that came out
are truly spectacular,

like the one on the cover of Nature.
That's kind of like

if you're a model and you get
on the cover of Vogue.

And they had defined
a new kind of science.

I think we are on the way

to make high precision
electron microscopy

a part of science in general.

The next stage
of this journey downwards

happened in Manchester,

with the discovery
of an incredible new material -

graphene.

The new electron microscopes
revealed that graphene

was a sheet of carbon
just a single atom thick.

And incredible strength was just
one of its unexpected properties.

So, just how impressive is graphene?
Well, I've come here to this lab

to carry out what's called
a stress test.

I've got two strips of plastic here.

It's a stretchy polymer. One of them
is just the pure polymer,

the other contains just 3% graphene
mixed in with it.

And I want to stretch them
to find out how much force is needed

to snap these strips.

First up is the pure polymer.

Ah. There we go.
It's gone? It's gone.

So that snapped at...?
533 newtons.

533 newtons.

So that's about two... Two bags
of cement. Two bags of cement.

So now you're going to swap it
with the graphene...

Yes, I'm going to reset...
..implanted one.

..reset the machine
with the graphene ones. OK? OK.

OK.

OK, so it's now hit 500 newtons.

We've now already overtaken
the non-graphene. Yes.

And it looks pretty healthy, as far
as I can tell. It's healthy, yes.

It's coming up to 750 newtons now.
740, 750.

We're now... And now
it's coming up to 1,000 newtons.

And still going strong.

And...

STRIP SNAPS
Oh! So that was about...

So the final force was 1,074.

So that's double.

Twice as much force was needed
to snap this polymer,

compared with the one without the
graphene. That is pretty impressive.

A huge improvement
with just a few percent

of graphene mixed in with the
polymer. Yeah. That's incredible.

Graphene has shaken the scientific
community to its core,

and yet was discovered
almost by chance

by scientist Andre Geim

as he was searching for
ever thinner slithers of graphite.

Talk to me through
what happened on that night,

when you realised your eureka
moment. 20 years ago,

I realised that just
taking Scotch tape,

putting piece of graphite
between the Scotch tape,

peeling the Scotch tape like that,
leaves small pieces of graphite.

Is that something we can
demonstrate here? Yeah.

Because, we have a piece
of graphite. Yeah.

You can take this piece
of graphite...

..and without much trouble...

You can, of course, make it thinner
by repeating this procedure.

But if you shine lights through,

you eventually start finding
flakes which are transparent,

and that actually was
the Eureka moment.

Because being reasonably
well educated,

I realised that if flakes
of graphite are transparent,

they're really, really thin.

Probably initially those were
ten layers thick

but eventually we went down
to a single layer.

It's hard to overstate
just how excited scientists

and engineers are about graphene,

so let me just remind you
what graphene is.

It's just a single flat sheet of
carbon atoms all bonded together.

But that would be really
under-selling it

because at around
a third of a nanometre,

it's just a single
carbon atom thick,

making it the thinnest material
ever made.

For a sense of why graphene
is so extraordinary,

we have to understand its physics
at the atomic scale.

Each sheet is made up
of repeating hexagons.

At each corner is a carbon atom

that's bonded powerfully
to three others.

Those bonds are the source
of the material's strength,

but they also seem to produce
other strange properties.

Each carbon atom bonds
to its three neighbours

by sharing electrons with them.

But not all the electrons
are used for this.

One electron
from each atom is spare.

These free electrons
can zip around unhindered,

and this has huge consequences
because it means that graphene

can be made to conduct electricity
incredibly efficiently.

There are high hopes
that it will enable new kinds

of electronic components,

revolutionising batteries
with much greater storage,

and also solar power generation,

water filtration, material science
and quantum computing.

Of course, this is still
early days in graphene research

but there is, without doubt,
much to play for.

The discovery of graphene brings
us towards the end of this story,

because with the newest

aberration-corrected
electron microscopes,

we're now able to see
on the smallest scales imaginable.

Professor Quentin Ramasse

runs some of the biggest
electron microscopes in the world.

He's going to zoom
into a sample of graphene,

until we can see individual atoms.

OK, what are you going to
show me here?

So, we've prepared some graphene
samples for you.

The samples are on a copper grid
just millimetres wide.

Let me put it here and actually
place it into the sample holder.

That's the three millimetre sample?
That's the three millimetre sample,

and now, hopefully, you can already
see... I can see the grid.

So they're essentially
just copper bars.

Under the optical microscope,

I can just make out holes
in the sheet of carbon

within the grid,
where the graphene flakes are.

To see them in more detail,

he now switches the sample into
a powerful electron microscope.

So what we're looking at now
is the same image

as we had
under the optical microscope?

You can already recognise
there's two shadows here,

the corners of those grid squares.

But in the middle here,
you recognise what you also saw

on the optical microscope,
which are those circle holes,

inside which is the graphene that
we're going to go and look at.

Slowly getting closer
and closer and closer.

We're going to be zooming into
graphene much further in.

Almost gives you vertigo when...
A little bit, yes.

..you realise
how much we're zooming in.

OK, so, what are we looking at here?

This is a patch of graphene
that's about 500 nanometres across.

How does this, then, compare to
the thickness of a human hair?

It would be...?
Several metres across.

Several metres across in diameter?
Yes.

That's how... OK, right.
That's how small it is.

And yet, we're still only
halfway in our journey down.

Not even... Not even halfway.
..of the way there. OK.

And so what we're trying to do,
really, is zoom in even further

on that little black speck.
Go for it.

So we'll start reducing
the magnification slowly.

I'll go to magnify it
ten times this time,

trying to not go too fast
so that you can really keep...

You don't want to spoil
the surprise for me.

You don't want to spoil
the surprise, no.

If you notice,
the shape of this hole,

it's about the shape of Africa,
I would say.

It's now getting to a size that is
more foreign to everyday life,

especially when you start realising
that this patch is going to be

100 times smaller still.

But let's zoom in and hopefully see

what we are here to see,
which are single atoms.

So this is now that same patch,

and you notice that it is very dark.

You might just about start
being able to recognise

some pattern in the middle,
some very faint lines

which correspond to
the hexagonal lattice in graphene.

But if you look closely
on the original image

that we still have on screen here,

you see small, round blobs that are
perhaps a little bit brighter.

And they are brighter because,
those atoms are heavier,

and we happen to know
they're silicone.

But just to demonstrate,
I can move that scan box

around one of those single atoms
and, hopefully,

it'll light up like a Christmas
light in the middle.

And there it is.

Because it is heavier,
it appears brighter on the image.

So that entire bright patch

is a single atom of silicone?

And yet it's a blob, it's a patch.
It's not the picture of an atom

that we learn about at school,
with a nucleus and electrons

buzzing around the outside.
So what is exactly...?

It remains reasonably abstract. What
we see is this average structure

of subatomic particles, and that
gives us this average round shape.

We've magnified this sample
that we've taken out

from a sample box and put into the
microscope by several million times

to see on the screen
this magnification.

So a tenth of a billionth
of a metre.

We've come a long way
since Robert Hooke.

THEY LAUGH

For me, as a theoretical physicist,

an atom is just abstract
mathematics -

an equation, an idea. But to see
one of them with my own eyes,

the building blocks of everything,

just ten millionths
of a millimetre across,

is nothing less than miraculous.

I still can't get my head
around the fact

that I'm looking at
individual atoms.

Well, look, I'll tell you. Yeah.

I mean, I've spent my career
studying atomic nuclei,

but, for me,
it's always been abstract.

The notion that we're looking at
an individual atom here...

And I love the analogy

that there are more atoms
in a single glass of water

than there are glasses of water in
all the oceans of the world, right?

Atoms are tiny. They are tiny.
The fact that we have an instrument

here that allows you
to look at an atom...

I... The novelty doesn't wear off?

It definitely doesn't, no.

I might be either simple-minded
or single-minded,

but seeing those single atoms is,

I think, something I'll want to do
for the rest of my life.

And it's just
a wonderful thing to see.

We've now entered a realm in which
we can see individual atoms,

and it's leading us into a new world
of single atom physics,

chemistry, biology,
engineering and medicine.

It's all so new that it's impossible
to say where it's going to take us.

But as we learn more
about our world,

from insects, to cells,

to the atoms that make us,

I know there'll be
many more wonders to discover.

Next time, I go big.

As I journey from our solar system
out to galactic superclusters,

I'll confront the biggest mysteries
in our universe.