Finnish company Multitouch Limited and research lab FIMM have joined forces to create a giant microscope with multitouch technology. One of the creators of the behemoth, Johan Lundin, has affectionately referred to the device as an 'iPad on steroids'.

[There was a video here]

The microscope is the brainchild of 2 technologies- web based virtual microscopy and monster sized, multi-gesture eye candy. It's UI is a stunning combo of Minority Report meets Google Maps with impressive end results, reeling in a whopping 1000-fold magnification level where cells and even subcells can be seen. Samples are digitally scanned and stored on a server, then displayed on the multitouch screen where that server can be accessed via the internet. The size of a single cell can be 200GB. Yikes.

The technology itself has been built upon a prior setup called the WebMicroscope, developed in Helsinki a couple of years back.

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