Stefan Hell

According to the belief, molecules closer together than 200 nanometers could not be told apart with focused light. This is because, in a packed molecular crowd, the molecules shout out their fluorescence simultaneously, causing their signal, their voices, to be confused.

Romanian Physicist

Used mainly in scientific contexts, like chemistry and physics, to describe a physical phenomenon.

Scientific Term

Fluorescence isn't always visible to the naked eye; sometimes, special equipment is needed.

Not Always Visible

Focus on the process: Materials absorb light then emit it, which is the essence of fluorescence.

Light Absorption

Fluorescence can refer to the impressive visual effect seen in various substances, often jewels or art.

Visual Impact

Fluorescence is sometimes used for aesthetic purposes in decor, fashion, and design.

Decorative Use

Some plants and animals display fluorescence naturally, which can be a fascinating topic in biology.

Nature's Display

 to see how prevalent this phenomenon is. And fish are much more interesting than corals, because they have really advanced vision, and some of the fish even have, the way that I was photographing it, they have lenses in their eyes that would magnify the fluorescence. So I wanted to seek this out further.

Glow-in-the-dark sharks...

 With this kind of imaging -- this kind of infrared, ultraviolet, invisible light imaging -- we were never going to image through the gold ground forgeries. How were we going to do that? Well we took the manuscript, and we decided to image it in X-ray fluorescence imaging.

William Noel: Revealing...

 a platform for fluorescence, bright-field, polarization, projection, all kinds of advanced microscopy built purely by folding paper. So, now you think, how is that possible? I'm going to show you some examples here, and we will run through some of them.

Manu Prakash: A 50-cent...

 But this measure can be unreliable. In contrast, chlorophyll fluorescence is a direct measure of photosynthetic activity. It can help us infer how much oxygen is being released and how much carbon is being absorbed in a given system.

Earth's mysterious red...

 we're trying to excise cancer, we don't know where the cancer is. We're trying to preserve nerves; we can't see where they are. So I said, wouldn't it be great if we could find a way to see nerves with fluorescence?

Quyen Nguyen:...

 one I call it a gut and a brain in a dish on the left side you have in green this gut sensor that has been isolated by fluorescence from a mouse and on your right side you have a neuron from the

How does our gut talk to...

 things what that is going on here well let's hear from the scientist paula annich who made this extraordinary discovery so why is platypus fluorescence important one of the main reasons is

This Platypus Can Glow...

 A visible and magical fluorescence. Even the dead leaf mantis was certainly sparkling like liquid fire. And to our delight, the whole jungle reverberated in unimaginable colors.

The Colorful,...

 and hope to protect them so beautiful they really are bright green fluorescence like this indicates that the coral is healthy scientists think they glow this color to

The Last Coral Reef of...

 would enable them to see this hidden universe of fluorescence there were so many open questions that we began to explore