3-D Microscope Uses Virtual Reality to Let You Explore a Molecule

In case you ever really wanted to wander around the face of a penny, there’s a new technology on the horizon that may be able to help. Nanotronics Imaging has created a new system, called nVisible, that lets anyone walk through a three-dimensional, digital visualization of a microscopic landscape, using a virtual reality headset.

The technology utilizes the company’s 3D-printed nSpec microscope system to pull together a virtual world from a microscope slide. The nSpec captures light from multiple angles and maps what it sees to coordinates. The points are plotted onto the virtual reality “atmosphere” that Nanotronics created, CEO Matthew Putman tells Quartz.

The system works with Oculus, Samsung Gear VR, and Google Cardboard, and the worlds it creates out of sub-molecular images are pretty surreal. The dark, hilly vistas are like a cross between an old 3D video game and the surface of another planet.

“I just left Yosemite [National Park] and the mountains and cliffs were stunning,” Putman says. ”As you look through the nano- and micro-world with nVisible, the same is true of the hills and valleys of molecules and crystals.”

nVisible from Nanotronics Imaging on Vimeo.

NVisible could allow scientists and engineers to explore the surfaces of materials at the nanoscopic level. Putman said he envisions his software being used to create new generations of tiny objects—think nanobots,carbon nanotubes, and anything else too small to see—as researchers will be able to interact with materials as if they were life-sized. 

As Putman said in a press release: “To create the future, you have to be able to see it.”