X-ray eye

An "X-ray eye" designed to study distant galaxies and black holes has turned its attention to our own star and snapped a remarkable portrait.

Its X-ray eye scans an actor's face for a fineness or boldness of line.

Gawande is a writer with a scalpel pen and an X-ray eye, and in this memoir he applies them to the world of the stressed-out, sleep-deprived, terrifyingly fallible trainee surgeon, where life-or-death decisions are made on the basis of five cups of coffee and an educated guess.

If he could have looked at him with an X-ray eye he would have seen a small sample whisky bottle in the judge's coat pocket, one of the adjuncts of "personal liberty" the judge was defending.

If Milton had had an X-ray eye he could have seen her take a cigarette from her handbag and light it nonchalantly the moment he was gone.