How Fast Does Eric Betzig Need Microscope Data?

Eric Betzig says microscopes get better all the time, and he keeps an ear out for anything new that comes along. One microscope coming online now will be more performative than anything they have had before. His best estimate is they will need on the order of 20 to 50 petabytes by the time the work is done. He wants that data in two years instead of 15 years, and he wants an order of magnitude more out of the scopes.

They are building scopes that take multi-well plates and will be automated for perturbation experiments. Betzig says the optics still have to be clever. For the last eight years, most of what he has been doing is mixing optics he already knows. He takes pieces off the shelf, combines them in different ways, and works until the pieces function together. The gain, he says, is in how the pieces are put together.