A Small Piece to Create Big Results
Rethinking the issue of size
Size can be a surprisingly interesting subject. On the surface of things it might not seem like there's much to bring to the table when considering it. One can simply look around to get an idea of what's large and what's small. When people are in a group they might decide to measure size by the height of the people around them. Meanwhile, someone alone in the woods might look at the trees and measure himself up against them. That same hiker might then come on a clearing and get a clear view of the mountains in the distance. These mountains would suddenly make the trees seem small in comparison. This all drives home the point that size isn't quite as clear cut as intuition might suggest. In reality, size itself is a complex puzzle. The largest objects have enough mass to bend gravity itself. Meanwhile the smallest objects can exist within a vast ecosystem while being totally invisible to the larger creatures around them. There might not seem to be much linking all of these things together. The one common point is that both distant celestial bodies and tiny microorganisms were invisible to people until they created advanced optical systems capable of bypassing the puzzle of scale. However, there's still one more element of size which makes it an even more involved system.
A small piece is needed to see the smallest things
To measure distant planets one will need to build huge devices. To see into the microscopic realm one needs a similar optical bridge. These elements, microscope objectives, are one of the main factors in determining just how far into the microscopic realm one will be able to gaze. Until fairly recently these were very expensive objects which needed to be made over an extended period of time. Modern manufacturing techniques now place them in the hands of anyone eager to finally overcome the limits of the human eye. One can even define the exact specifications of these lenses in order to control exactly what he or she will see.
