Electron Microscope Images

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syphilis

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Electron micrograph of a squid’s suckers. The white fang-like rings are approximately 400 micrometres in diameter and are used by the squid to latch on to prey.

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woahh

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Apparently forget-me-not pollen grains are among the smallest of any plant species.

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The Forest That Knew No Fractals by Reciprocity on Flickr.

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Best microscope photographs of 2012

These incredible microscope photographs are some of the winners of Olympus Bioscapes Digital Imaging Competition. The contest consisted of almost 2,000 photographs hailing from 62 countries. Each image is stunning in its own way, and it just goes to show that sometimes the smallest things can be the most fascinating.

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Pollen, seeds and fruit under the microscope

If you’re a photographer and you like to get really, really close to things we may have found you someone new to aspire to. British professor and photographer Rob Kesseler is taking macro to a whole new level with his latest series of photographs that look at nature under a microscope.

The specimens are coated in a fine layer of gold and then photographed under the microscope, before being digitally manipulated to amplify clarity and intricacy. The final results are pollen, seeds and fruit as you’ve never seen them before – harmoniously bridging the gap between art and science.

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Beyond their pretty remarkable ability to “think” and problem-solve, slime molds are just plain beautiful.

John Bonner, a professor emeritus at Princeton, has been studying them for seventy years. He’s been fascinated by the ability of this “bag of amoebae encased in a thin slime sheath” to operate like a simple brain, despite its biological simplicity. He’s used the gooey little guys to further the study of evolution and development for over half a century, and some of the images he’s collected are stunning.

The GIFs above are from this collection of half-century-old film clips captured by a young Bonner, showing the life cycle of a slime mold. Lastly, you absolutely do not want to miss this gorgeous new collection of close-up slime mold photos SciAm’s Alex Wild.

Old and new, these little creatures are as beautiful in form as they are amazing in biology.

Check my archive for today’s other slime mold posts!!

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Various alcohols under an electron microscope. This has certainly reinforced my love of beer.

“What you can see in the magnified pictures are the crystalised carbohydrates that have become sugars and glucose. Each image was created by using a pipette of each particular drink and squeezing a drop onto a slide. Then the droplets are allowed to dry out and the slide is placed under the microscope and a picture taken.” -Lester Hutt, founder of Bevshots, who created these beauties.

For those who may not know (thanks, Wikipedia!): “An electron microscope uses a beam of electrons to illuminate a specimen and produce a magnified image… The electron microscope uses electrostatic and electromagnetic ”lenses” to control the electron beam and focus it to form an image. These lenses are analogous to but different from the glass lenses of an optical microscope that form a magnified image by focusing light on or through the specimen. Electron microscopes are used to observe a wide range of biological and inorganic specimens includingmicroorganisms, cells, large molecules, biopsy samples, metals, and crystals.”

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Marigold reflected quarter section, section taken by an electron microscope-Robert Kessler.

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For the first time, scientists have imaged DNA’s iconic spiraling helix.

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WOOO 

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mdma

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Electron microscope images by Robert Kesseler

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Living cells captured in pyramid cages

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NASA Innovator of Year Hunts for Extraterrestrial Amino Acids |

The hunt for the organic molecules that create proteins and enzymes critical for life here on Earth has largely happened in sophisticated terrestrial laboratories equipped with high-tech gadgetry needed to tease out their presence in space rocks and other extraterrestrial samples.

A technologist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., now wants to take that search to the sources themselves.

Stephanie Getty, who recently was selected as Goddard’s Innovator of the Year for her trailblazing work in the area of advanced instrumentation, has won $1.2 million from NASA’s Astrobiology Science and Technology Instrument Development (ASTID) program to advance the Organics Analyzer for Sampling Icy Surfaces (OASIS). This miniaturized liquid chromatograph-mass spectrometer leverages technologies developed under previous Goddard-sponsored research and development efforts to study the chirality, or “handedness,” of amino acids on the icy moons of the outer planets, asteroids, and Kuiper Belt Objects.

“It’s like we’re packing up a well-equipped Earth lab and flying it to an asteroid or another solar system body, where we can get access to a pristine supply of these organic molecules to study,” Getty said, adding that by going to the source, scientists reduce the risk of contaminating samples with Earth-borne compounds. “With an instrument like OASIS, we could get that much closer to understanding how organic chemicals formed in the solar system, whether the potential for life exists elsewhere, and what may have seeded life here on Earth.”

And OASIS would carry out this science with 100 times greater sensitivity than what was possible with previously flown liquid chromatograph-mass spectrometers, she added. continue reading