In preliminary experiments a novel method for focusing and amplifying electromagnetic radiation has been discovered. This method is cheap, reproducible and readily available and is capable of effectively focusing a wide spectrum of radiation from visible light to x-rays and even acoustic waves. The method involves heating a glass capillary and applying tension to produce a variety of capillary geometries with outer diameters at the tip that can be <50nm. There are apertures at these tips which are, for the smallest pipettes, considerably less than 50nm. Such capillaries are not novel; they have been used for approximately a decade by biologists to inject substances into cells. The novelty of these capillaries is to focus and amplify light beyond the diffraction limit and to produce sub-micron intense x-ray spots.
