Today's date: 21 November 2009
This Week: Death of the mastadon
In the News: Antarctic ozone hole: 10th largest on record!
Coming Thursday: Return of the wild: Coyotes, bears and turkeys are back!
Archive for the ‘Cool Science Images’ Category
In the Shadow of Cronus - Thursday, February 19th, 2009
Yes, this is a real picture. More accurately, it’s 165 pictures pasted together from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft’s flyby of Saturn as the planet between the probe and the sun. From this unique vantage point, the contrast of light and shadow enabled astronomers to discern new bands of ice and dust — perhaps the remnants [...]
Phantom Filter - Wednesday, February 4th, 2009
Buried 1000 meters under the city of Hida, Japan, and packed with 11,146 photomultiplier tubes, the Super Kamiokande detector is set up to capture the presence of what may be the universe’s most bashful particle. The ghost-like neutrino has no electrical charge and a near zero mass. That means it doesn’t like to play [...]
Morel Beacon - Monday, December 29th, 2008
No, that’s not a cover of a 70s-era psychedelic rock album. But if you were thinking “Dark Side of the Mushroom,” you’re closer than you think. This is a dark photo of a bioluminescent bunch of Mycena lucentipes mushrooms. They’re an especially radiant species of the 65 different mushroom varieties known to glow.
Why does this [...]
A Nose for Nectar - Thursday, October 20th, 2005
This CSI is a scanning electron micrograph of the snout of a butterfly. Conveniently coiled when not in use, the long proboscises of butterflies are used to drink and obtain nectar and other nutrients from flowers. This pretty picture was obtained with the aid of a scanning electron microscope, a microscope that scans a [...]
Revenge of the Cats? - Monday, September 5th, 2005
The progenitor of canine parvovirus, shown here in glorious molecular detail, once afflicted only cats and their relatives. But in the 1970s, the cat virus reconfigured just two or three surface amino acids and unleashed a plague upon dogs everywhere.
All viruses, whether they infect plants, animals or bacteria, are utterly dependent on living host [...]
Fallin’ Pollen - Monday, November 15th, 2004
Tissue, please… In honor of the sneezin’ season, this CSI is common ragweed pollen as seen under a microscope. Ragweed pollen is the principal cause of hay fever and can also trigger asthma. But for all the itchy throats and watery eyes, this tough little plant is just trying to survive.
The common [...]
A Collage of Nature’s Tongues? - Friday, November 5th, 2004
This CSI is Salvinia molesta, or Giant Salvinia, a fast-growing, free-floating aquatic fern that is native to Brazil. Instead of roots, the Salvinia uses a three-leaf or frond approach: two water resistant fronds float atop the surface while the third frond is divided into sections and submersed in the water, serving as a “root.”
This giant [...]
Virus Caught on Candid Camera - Monday, October 11th, 2004
Atomic cameras at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute have captured a new model of the human papillomavirus (HPV). The picture may be more of this cancer causing bug than you ever wanted to see, but it gives scientists a valuable closeup. The picture shows, for example, that the virus may look a [...]
It’s Fall Break - Wednesday, May 5th, 2004
While wandering on the beach recently, those of us at The Why Files got a little bugged out by the sight of a line, roughly a foot wide and stretching for miles down the sand, of Asian Lady Beetles-a ladybug-like insect originally imported from Asia as a biological tool for pest control. [...]
How Genes Build a Fly - Wednesday, February 5th, 2003
This composite image of a fruit fly embryo at a very early stage of development helps tell scientists how genes govern an animal’s body plan. Using a confocal microscope and three fluorescently-labeled gene products — one red, one blue and one green — biologists can observe cells as they are told by such genes which [...]
Cool Science Images
Virtual Science!
You are currently browsing the archives for the Cool Science Images category.
Archives
©2009 University of Wisconsin
Board of Regents
- That's bad. We're not fans of invasive species either. http://bit.ly/3QZwEt RT @WiscWaterLib: Bad news for Lake Michigan: http://ow.ly/E253 22 hrs ago
- Just a tweet of thanks to everyone that has included us in their Twitter lists! Thank you! 22 hrs ago
- Coming Thursday: Return of the wild: Coyotes, bears and turkeys are back! 23 hrs ago
- Many environmentalists maintain that intense blasts of sonar, used to detect submarines, disorient, injure, and even kill marine mammals. 3 days ago
- More updates...