/Tech9h ago

ESM project founder Alex Rives and UC Berkeley collaborators launch a cryo-EM phase plate using the world's brightest continuous wave laser

It enables visualization of smaller proteins inside intact cells.

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Alex Rives
elvis
David
Yann LeCun#3
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Alex Rives@alexrives#1286inTech

Together with UC Berkeley we are announcing the laser phase plate - a breakthrough in atomic resolution imaging. This is the brightest continuous wave laser in the world, 100 million times the intensity of the surface of the sun.

Phase contrast plays an important role in microscopy, but it was thought close to impossible for electron microscopy, where it would require interfering with an electron beam. Holger Mueller and Robert Glaeser proposed exactly this using a standing wave laser. It has taken over 15 years to make this a reality. Biohub partnered with UC Berkeley and Mueller to support this work and to engineer and build the technology.

Contrast has been the critical barrier to achieving atomic resolution imaging of the cell. In cryo-electron tomography, a cellular imaging technology that uses electron microscopy, the low contrast makes it impossible to resolve anything but the largest proteins within their cellular context. The laser phase plate removes that barrier.

With advances in AI this breakthrough in contrast will start to open up a new frontier in structural biology, that will allow us to see the molecular machines of the cell, and how they assemble into far more complex and dynamic systems, and understand how they work.

11:00 AM · Jun 11, 2026 · 89.7K Views
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Many users celebrated UC Berkeley's laser phase plate for atomic cell imaging as a massive unlock that could accelerate biology research by orders of magnitude, while a few challenged the sun-intensity claims in the announcements.

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Alex Rives@alexrives

Read more: https://biohub.org/blog/laser-phase-plate-cryo-em-making-invisible-visible/

Alex Rives@alexrives

Together with UC Berkeley we are announcing the laser phase plate - a breakthrough in atomic resolution imaging. This is the brightest continuous wave laser in the world, 100 million times the intensity of the surface of the sun.

Phase contrast plays an important role in microscopy, but it was thought close to impossible for electron microscopy, where it would require interfering with an electron beam. Holger Mueller and Robert Glaeser proposed exactly this using a standing wave laser. It has taken over 15 years to make this a reality. Biohub partnered with UC Berkeley and Mueller to support this work and to engineer and build the technology.

Contrast has been the critical barrier to achieving atomic resolution imaging of the cell. In cryo-electron tomography, a cellular imaging technology that uses electron microscopy, the low contrast makes it impossible to resolve anything but the largest proteins within their cellular context. The laser phase plate removes that barrier.

With advances in AI this breakthrough in contrast will start to open up a new frontier in structural biology, that will allow us to see the molecular machines of the cell, and how they assemble into far more complex and dynamic systems, and understand how they work.

9hViews 2.8KLikes 48Bookmarks 23
RETWEETS2
David@DavidSHolz

@alexrives so cool

Alex Rives@alexrives

Together with UC Berkeley we are announcing the laser phase plate - a breakthrough in atomic resolution imaging. This is the brightest continuous wave laser in the world, 100 million times the intensity of the surface of the sun.

Phase contrast plays an important role in microscopy, but it was thought close to impossible for electron microscopy, where it would require interfering with an electron beam. Holger Mueller and Robert Glaeser proposed exactly this using a standing wave laser. It has taken over 15 years to make this a reality. Biohub partnered with UC Berkeley and Mueller to support this work and to engineer and build the technology.

Contrast has been the critical barrier to achieving atomic resolution imaging of the cell. In cryo-electron tomography, a cellular imaging technology that uses electron microscopy, the low contrast makes it impossible to resolve anything but the largest proteins within their cellular context. The laser phase plate removes that barrier.

With advances in AI this breakthrough in contrast will start to open up a new frontier in structural biology, that will allow us to see the molecular machines of the cell, and how they assemble into far more complex and dynamic systems, and understand how they work.

8hViews 1.8KLikes 18Bookmarks 1
REPLIES8
elvis@omarsar0

Alex is one of my favourite researchers. Follow him if you don’t yet.

Just wow!

“100 million times the intensity of the surface of the sun.”

Alex Rives@alexrives

Together with UC Berkeley we are announcing the laser phase plate - a breakthrough in atomic resolution imaging. This is the brightest continuous wave laser in the world, 100 million times the intensity of the surface of the sun.

Phase contrast plays an important role in microscopy, but it was thought close to impossible for electron microscopy, where it would require interfering with an electron beam. Holger Mueller and Robert Glaeser proposed exactly this using a standing wave laser. It has taken over 15 years to make this a reality. Biohub partnered with UC Berkeley and Mueller to support this work and to engineer and build the technology.

Contrast has been the critical barrier to achieving atomic resolution imaging of the cell. In cryo-electron tomography, a cellular imaging technology that uses electron microscopy, the low contrast makes it impossible to resolve anything but the largest proteins within their cellular context. The laser phase plate removes that barrier.

With advances in AI this breakthrough in contrast will start to open up a new frontier in structural biology, that will allow us to see the molecular machines of the cell, and how they assemble into far more complex and dynamic systems, and understand how they work.

1hViews 2.5KLikes 18Bookmarks 4
Yann LeCun@ylecun

@alexrives @Andercot Amazing 👏

Alex Rives@alexrives

Together with UC Berkeley we are announcing the laser phase plate - a breakthrough in atomic resolution imaging. This is the brightest continuous wave laser in the world, 100 million times the intensity of the surface of the sun.

Phase contrast plays an important role in microscopy, but it was thought close to impossible for electron microscopy, where it would require interfering with an electron beam. Holger Mueller and Robert Glaeser proposed exactly this using a standing wave laser. It has taken over 15 years to make this a reality. Biohub partnered with UC Berkeley and Mueller to support this work and to engineer and build the technology.

Contrast has been the critical barrier to achieving atomic resolution imaging of the cell. In cryo-electron tomography, a cellular imaging technology that uses electron microscopy, the low contrast makes it impossible to resolve anything but the largest proteins within their cellular context. The laser phase plate removes that barrier.

With advances in AI this breakthrough in contrast will start to open up a new frontier in structural biology, that will allow us to see the molecular machines of the cell, and how they assemble into far more complex and dynamic systems, and understand how they work.

30mViews 425Likes 3Bookmarks 1
Mingye Wang 0.97@Arthur2e5

@IAmArcIvanov @alexrives they don’t, that’s why you freeze them (cryo) so they don’t all run away doing brownians

3hViews 34Likes 1
Arcadiy Ivanov@IAmArcIvanov

@Arthur2e5 @alexrives Fair point but by surviving I didn't mean biological surviving but more like not becoming a ball of plasma instantaneously.

3hViews 27Likes 2
Arcadiy Ivanov@IAmArcIvanov

@alexrives How does cell (or anything) survives exposure to such continuous energies?

3hViews 189
Rippa Sats@RippaSatss

@alexrives @NikoMcCarty 👀

8hViews 367Likes 1
PHOTON COURIER@Ahmourinabil20

A complete first-principles study of the real parts of the eigenvalues of the real elliptic Ginibre ensemble S = H + gA in the strong-coupling limit g → ∞ — and a small voyage in which every result was caught, weighed, and made to confess its origin before it was allowed into the paper. 

Main results, all proved analytically and verified by an independent high-statistics simulation at a fixed seed:

• An exact finite-n variance floor for the real parts that is PARITY-SPLIT:

 (n−2)/[2(n−1)] for even n, and exactly 1/2 for odd n — the odd value carried by a single guaranteed real eigenvalue of double variance.

• The algebraic reason behind that lonely mode: under multiplication by i, the  ensemble sits exactly in Altland–Zirnbauer CLASS D. The odd-n eigenvalue is the topologically protected MAJORANA ZERO-MODE (index ν = 1 odd / 0 even), protected for all couplings. A random-matrix variance turns out to be a statement about topological superconductors. 

• A genuine odd 1/g correction (decisive at 8σ) that no symmetric Lorentzian can reproduce, traced to eigenvector non-normality, a critical α = 1 heavy tail, and persistently-defective near-real modes.

• An exact quasi-independence lemma for the real parts, a Gumbel extreme-value law 

  under one trace constraint, the exact conditional-floor coefficient (n−1)/[n(n+2)], and asymptotic universality.

Everything reached by elementary means — first-order perturbation theory, Wick contraction, trace identities — where the literature uses skew-orthogonal 

polynomials and Pfaffian processes. Throughout, a strict discipline: no fitting presented as derivation, no manual adjustment, no hidden correction, and every wall named honestly — including the one coefficient a(n) left open for the reason its own α = 1 criticality dictates. 

A companion Python script reproduces every number in the paper from a fixed seed. 

No number was forced; every failed guess is recorded as a failure. That honesty is 

the real treasure.

6hViews 188Likes 1
miles@mileswhen

@alexrives 🙇‍♂️

8hViews 250
Shinka - AI@ShinkaIoT

@omarsar0 When your research outputs hit sun-level intensity, you know you're onto something big. 🔥

1hViews 17Likes 2
Mingye Wang 0.97@Arthur2e5

@IAmArcIvanov @alexrives iirc at that scale and temp radiation damage is more like the occasional atom getting shoved out of place (and usually getting averaged away but some show through). something to do with the ice pinning everything down…

2hViews 17Likes 2
AI Mastery Guide@aiseomastery

@alexrives 15 years to crack atomic resolution imaging of living cells. Combined with AI this could rewrite what we understand about how life actually works at the molecular level 🔬

4hViews 51Likes 1
Oleksandr Foyevtsov@foyevtsov

@alexrives 100 million times the intensity of the surface of the sun. - and you don't bother explain your implicit manipulation here. OK. Laser pointer has literally higher flux than the sun flux on earth surface within its spectral window

3hViews 135
AHQ⁵@AhQFish

@alexrives Check out “a periodic lattice” a “literal analog” for a phase transition

4hViews 100
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