Not with the microscope.

If you've ever seen an electron microscope picture, you'll see this.

These ones are taken by a transmission electron microscope.

This would be paramecium with an optical microscope, one that you have in a typical biology classroom.

And so the future is electron microscopes but it's also what are called fluorescent optical microscopes.

And unfortunately, if you want to learn about the microorganisms, just looking at them in a microscope is not sufficient.

So we've got transmission and scanning electron microscopes.

And if you look at them in the microscope, you can see that we actually have 10 times as many cells of microbes on us as we have human cells.

If you've ever seen an electron microscope picture, you'll see this. This all looks the same, then there's this bit over here which is incredibly complicated.

These bacteria were not uncovered sooner because they are also among the smallest of all Earth's organisms so minute that they cannot be seen with conventional optical microscopy.

It's sort of like when Galileo invented or, didn't invent came to use a telescope and could see the heavens in a new way, or Leeuwenhoek became aware of the microscope or actually invented and could see biology in a new way.