• Question: Which do you think is more useful a telescope or a microscope?

    Asked by njade to Ben, Dave, Ed, Sam, Susana on 18 Jun 2013.
    • Photo: Ed Lowe

      Ed Lowe answered on 18 Jun 2013:

      It depends on what you want to look at! A microscope is great for looking at cells but pretty useless for examining the Crab Nebula! I use a microscope far more myself, but both are invaluable to science.

    • Photo: David Briggs

      David Briggs answered on 18 Jun 2013:

      Both are extremely useful – and both have their own (very different) roles.

      Microscopes have told us more about us, whereas telescopes have told us more about our place in the universe.

    • Photo: Susana Teixeira

      Susana Teixeira answered on 20 Jun 2013:

      I think a microscope is more important to help us understand the world closest to us, and therefore on the short term it may be more useful.
      A telescope gives us information on a larger scale, not just of space and time, but also on how we feel about ourselves individually and as a species. So on the long term it has been very important in shaping our ways of thinking. But also helping us understand things that turn out to be relevant down here on earth… like gravity, atomic structures, types or particles that exist, …..

      Very hard choice!

    • Photo: Sam Horrell

      Sam Horrell answered on 21 Jun 2013:

      For me personally a microscope. We spend a lot of time looking down them at crystals we’ve grown and a synchrotron is effectively a microscope for seeing atoms. There are plenty out there that would argue for the telescope too though. I don’t have one but I do enjoy looking out into space.

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