We can't see most of the universe with the naked eye, but we've come up with some incredible inventions to bring things into view
THE naked eye is not a reliable guide to the world. If you believed your eyes, you might conclude that the head louse is pretty much the smallest thing in existence.
Fortunately, we can overcome this sensory limitation. The invention of the microscope, for example, allowed Robert Hooke and others to document hitherto unseen aspects of nature – details of the flea and other disease-bearing parasites, and of course the existence of microbes such as bacteria. Without that knowledge, we wouldn't be living as long as we do.
If we had stuck with our natural vision alone, we would also have very little conception of what is going on at the other end ...
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