In 2012, having by then read about three different kinds of cancers for personal reasons and thinking that the explanations had been sometimes vague and inconsistent or implausible and the terms sometimes euphemistic, I guessed that all diagnosed diseases were fictions. I sent paragraphs, and later essays, to a number of people asking, could a cell travel from one part of the body to another, could an x-ray really see through the skin, why would viral cells destroy their host, could any number of invisibly small things cause harm, and did the account of how they altered cells make sense (as well as, later, was DNA compatible philosophically with living matter, in other words, was there a satisfactory account of how the body interpreted the instructions within it?). However, it wasn't until later that I looked more closely at magnifying glasses and microscopes.
Anyone who uses a camera will probably agree that although a zoom brings an object closer, you cannot magnify much more than twice without losing so much clarity that the object becomes unidentifiable. Slide projection produces a larger clear image but not one larger than the original object. I have observed enough using my own microscope, a Prinz 2801, to be certain that what is on the slide at most will appear as a pale image of the stain over an otherwise relatively unchanged image and that variations can be accounted for by parts of the slide appearing as patterns of light and dark and by variations in illumination. Is the unchanging image one sees of a hidden object? When I turn the microscope upside down, behind the glass at the end of the three small objective lens tubes I see what look like orange bird irises. I had already thought that one saw the lens of one’s own eye (the cornea) towards the top of the microscope cylinder and that the fixed image below this resembled it in structure. However, the microscope is indestructible, and I found no object in another microscope I acquired recently that comes in two parts (the Sunagor MagnaScope), so I thought more about the theoretical limits to enlargement, whatever microscopes might or might not contain if they are not hollow.
One can account for enlargement, although I am not a physicist, by first acknowledging from observation and deduction that magnification is reflection and that the image enlarges because, for example, as we lift a magnifying lens from a piece of paper a smaller area is reflected onto the convex lens, so that individual objects are larger than they would otherwise be. This alone accounts for enlargement, but the fact that thicker lenses of the same convexity produce larger images implies that the image is also re-reflected so that for the same angle only a part of the reflected image will be viewed on the lens, the point of curvature, or where the reflections meet before diverging, being before the center of the lens. However, the angle at which reflection occurs will soon be limited by the rim or in the case of the microscope the lens tube. The image would in any case become smaller when the angle at which reflection takes place is such that a larger part of the reflected area is re-reflected on the lens. Blurring may also occur as a result of diffusion of light, for example, when the funnel of the Sunagor is lifted from the object or if the lens is not restricted by a rim or lens tube, so that the angle of reflection reaches 180 degrees and reflection becomes impossible or there is a return to normal size. Before that, as is the case with slide projection, there will be blurring because of over enlargement, and distortions such as multiple images and tunneling will occur with thicker lenses. Although we are not viewing the object directly, the diameter of the lens of our eye may be a factor in the image sometimes turning upside down, and in apparent magnification in general, because parts of the reflected image are no longer in our direct vision (as when objects beyond a glass of water may appear within it as displaced from left to right), as may reflection in the eye and the different resistances of the two media, glass and eye. Some time ago, I calculated that hypothetical enlargement of what was on the Prinz slide would only be 3.3 times. Although the calculation may prove wrong (for instance, the angle is based on hypothetical light projection from the mirror rather than from an unknown convex lens within the microscope or from the plane glass at the end of the objective lens tube), what one sees reflected within the microscope is at low magnification/reflection and it would be impossible to see a speck on the slide under the lens enlarged to the width of the lens or the tube aperture.
Anyone who uses a camera will probably agree that although a zoom brings an object closer, you cannot magnify much more than twice without losing so much clarity that the object becomes unidentifiable. Slide projection produces a larger clear image but not one larger than the original object. I have observed enough using my own microscope, a Prinz 2801, to be certain that what is on the slide at most will appear as a pale image of the stain over an otherwise relatively unchanged image and that variations can be accounted for by parts of the slide appearing as patterns of light and dark and by variations in illumination. Is the unchanging image one sees of a hidden object? When I turn the microscope upside down, behind the glass at the end of the three small objective lens tubes I see what look like orange bird irises. I had already thought that one saw the lens of one’s own eye (the cornea) towards the top of the microscope cylinder and that the fixed image below this resembled it in structure. However, the microscope is indestructible, and I found no object in another microscope I acquired recently that comes in two parts (the Sunagor MagnaScope), so I thought more about the theoretical limits to enlargement, whatever microscopes might or might not contain if they are not hollow.
One can account for enlargement, although I am not a physicist, by first acknowledging from observation and deduction that magnification is reflection and that the image enlarges because, for example, as we lift a magnifying lens from a piece of paper a smaller area is reflected onto the convex lens, so that individual objects are larger than they would otherwise be. This alone accounts for enlargement, but the fact that thicker lenses of the same convexity produce larger images implies that the image is also re-reflected so that for the same angle only a part of the reflected image will be viewed on the lens, the point of curvature, or where the reflections meet before diverging, being before the center of the lens. However, the angle at which reflection occurs will soon be limited by the rim or in the case of the microscope the lens tube. The image would in any case become smaller when the angle at which reflection takes place is such that a larger part of the reflected area is re-reflected on the lens. Blurring may also occur as a result of diffusion of light, for example, when the funnel of the Sunagor is lifted from the object or if the lens is not restricted by a rim or lens tube, so that the angle of reflection reaches 180 degrees and reflection becomes impossible or there is a return to normal size. Before that, as is the case with slide projection, there will be blurring because of over enlargement, and distortions such as multiple images and tunneling will occur with thicker lenses. Although we are not viewing the object directly, the diameter of the lens of our eye may be a factor in the image sometimes turning upside down, and in apparent magnification in general, because parts of the reflected image are no longer in our direct vision (as when objects beyond a glass of water may appear within it as displaced from left to right), as may reflection in the eye and the different resistances of the two media, glass and eye. Some time ago, I calculated that hypothetical enlargement of what was on the Prinz slide would only be 3.3 times. Although the calculation may prove wrong (for instance, the angle is based on hypothetical light projection from the mirror rather than from an unknown convex lens within the microscope or from the plane glass at the end of the objective lens tube), what one sees reflected within the microscope is at low magnification/reflection and it would be impossible to see a speck on the slide under the lens enlarged to the width of the lens or the tube aperture.
