I am currently in the same room with a scanning-tunnelling electron microscope. Its carrying case is the size of a large briefcase. So far, we're not being allowed to play with it.
The ones used for cutting-edge research still fill a room. It's hard to make an elaborate vacuum chamber and set of vibration dampeners small. The little ones don't require a vacuum and have a certain amount of fault-tolerance, but have corresponding limits on the resolution you can expect from them.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
no subject