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Friday Squid Blogging: Squid Helps Discover New Marine Species

A new scientific instrument called the Squid, a spinning wheel confocal microscope, enabled researchers to discover 31 new marine species in just two weeks by using lasers to scan microscopic organism details in real-time aboard ships. This technology eliminates the typical weeks-long process of staining and mounting specimens, allowing scientists to observe cellular interactions and skeleton form

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Utopia Tech

July 31, 2026 · 1 min read

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The Squid is a new scientific machine : One of the technological breakthroughs was the onboard use of a spinning wheel confocal microscope, nicknamed the Squid, which uses lasers to scan microscopic details of how organisms are put together. “That opens up a whole new world of exploring. We could see cells interacting with each other, exchanging material and building skeletons.

And we could do that live on the ship, when usually it takes a couple of weeks of staining and mounting to see anything,” Osborn said. The expedition discovered thirty-one new marine species in two weeks. The article doesn’t say if any of them were new species of squid.

As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven’t covered. Blog moderation policy.

Originally published at schneier.com

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