Science Visualized As Art: 2008 Winning Images (PHOTOS)

The New Scientist has a gallery of gorgeous images that visualize science as artwork. The images are the winners of the 2008 International Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge: "The awards are given to the best photographs, illustrations and interactive media that visualize science and technology."

Scroll down to see some of this year's winners (see the whole gallery here).

"Squid Suckers: The Little Monsters That Feed the Beast, awarded an Honorable Mention in Photography, is a false-colour microscope image of the suction cups on the arm of the Loligo pealei squid. The 400 micrometer suckers have chitin "fangs" and were photographed by Jessica D. Schiffman and Caroline L. Schauer, Drexel University."

"Mad Hatter's Tea, winner of the Informational Graphics award, is taken from a book called Alice's Adventures in a Microscopic Wonderland. Colleen Champ and Dennis Kunkel, at Concise Image Studios, carefully built scenes from Lewis Carroll's story using microscope images of insects and other small animals."

"The Glass Forest, winner of the photography prize, depicts a community of microscopic diatoms - unicellular algae with a peculiar glass-like cell wall - attached to a marine invertebrate (Eudendrium racemosum). Mario De Stefano, 2nd University of Naples, captured the image with a scanning electron microscope."

Comments

[MagisterLudi]

The Tea Party was the best: the rich and subtle colors; the anthropomorphic context with a dash of humor; great photography. I am puzzled that The Glass Fores won the prize. It's look fairly pedestrian by comparison.

[Forest]

Stunning new imagery.

[ofcoursejesusisblack]

BTW, is anybody watching Axelrod on MTP. David is smacking Schmidt down. Called him a LIAR! hahahaha!

[quasar]

Excellent. Great stuff.

[indyleftist]

Those are really cool

I have to wonder how much they tampered with the color on some though.
I know a lot of those big microscopes don't use light so they don't collect color information

[SolarPowerGuy]

Even microscopes which DO use light may not collect and separate multiple colors. In that case you would get a black-and-white image from a light microscope.

The type of microscope that you are thinking about which "doesn't use light" is an electron microscope. To visualize objects in an electron microscope, your samples have to coated with a very fine layer of metal. The sample is obviously dead then.

To my eyes, the third image (the one with the fan-shaped diatoms clinging to the body of a shellfish) looks a lot like an electron-microscope image. Yes, they would have to color such an image.

But the shellfish and the diatoms are large enough that they COULD be seen under a regular light microscope. The image would not be as impressively sharp as the electron microscope image. But you could see the colors under the light microscope and, if you wished, use that information to "paint" realistic colors on the EM image.

[RovesBrain]

Horton hears a Who!

[nastyvirus]

Wow! Fantastic! I'm clicking on that link to the gallery. If I don't come back, call the Army.

[ofcoursejesusisblack]

Ah, I scrolled down so fast to see the pictures, I didn't see the link. I'm heading over there now.

[Marichu]

The images and photographs were beautiful, intriguing, whimsical and a bit disturbing. This must be where the horror movie genre gets its conceptualization for their scary creatures/monsters. The image of the suction cups of the sealei squid could certainly qualify.

[Nolana]

Wicked cool!! :~)

I have always loved looking at things under a microscope. I once saw a volvox colony give birth/die/ (in order to do one, a volvox colony has to do both). I know... hopelessly dorky. But it was just so cool!

[zelduh]

Beautiful!

[ericabiz]

i hope this makes people wash their hands more, if them getting sick isn't enough...

:/

beautiful though!

[tlgeiger62]

Just beautiful. So fascinating to see beauty really can be found everywhere.

[bartonfink]

what about palin?

[Mort]

There are some beautiful and amazing things if we really look around.

[InfiniteShibumi]

Yes, and most of it is underwater. Seriously.

[luvronpaul]

I like the tea party

[ofcoursejesusisblack]

I agree! I want to see more pictures!