Colorful and abstract - but is it art?

Neat, huh? Actually, this is microphotography. Pictures of what various wood fibers look like under a microscope. The colors are the stains used to bring out the variations of texture.

The Six Billion Dollar Experiment

It just might be the most complicated thing that humans have ever built. What is it? The Large Hadron Collider. The Large Hadron Collider promises to recreate the conditions right after the Big Bang. By revisiting the beginning of time, scientists hope to unravel some of the deepest secrets of our Universe. At Cern, the Large Hadron Collider could recreate conditions that last prevailed when the universe was less than a trillionth of a second old. Within these first few moments the building blocks of the Universe were created. The search for these fundamental particles has occupied scientists for decades but there remains one particle that has stubbornly refused to appear in any experiment. The Higgs Boson is so crucial to our understanding of the Universe that it has been dubbed the God particle. It explains how fundamental particles acquire mass, or as one scientist plainly states: "It is what makes stuff stuff..." Here are some stats for you trivia fans: 20-year work-in-progress A team of 7,000 physicists from more than 80 nations 27 kilometers in circumference, 175 meters underground facilitating head-on collision of protons, traveling very near the speed-of-light each tunnel is big enough to run a train through it. temperatures generated: more than 1000,000 times hotter than the sun's core superconducting magnets are cooled to a temperature colder than in deep space If you want to find out more about how it works, nytimes.com has a nifty explanation complete with graphics that move. It's pretty cool. Check it out here. Still want to see more? Here's a slide show.

Blood - It's kinda cool!

A carpet of red blood cells clearly showing their typical biconcave disc shape. This highly flexible shape provides a large surface area for absorption and release of oxygen and carbon dioxide, and allows the cells to move easily through the finest of capillaries. (Colour-enhanced scanning electron micrograph by Dave McCarthy and Annie Cavanagh) These pictures show different kinds of blood cells: Red blood cells, (erythrocytes, red), white blood cells (leukocytes, yellow, greenish), and platelets (thrombocytes, grey). The disc-shaped, biconcave erythrocytes transport oxygen to the body's cells and remove carbon dioxide to the lungs. Leukocytes are part of the immune system, defending the body against infection by ingesting pathogens by phagocytosis or by producing antibodies. Thrombocytes are involved with blood clotting. They gather at sites of injury and produce clotting factor.

Journey Into The Human Body

Corpus has been realised in a 35-meter high transparent building with the contours of the human body projecting from it. The eye-catching building is situated along the A44 highway between Amsterdam and The Hague. What is it? Corpus is a journey through the human body during which the visitor can see, feel and hear how the human body works and what roles healthy food, healthy life and plenty of exercise plays. CORPUS offers a variety of information and provides education and entertainment with this journey as well as a vast number of permanent and variable exhibitions.

The Bug Murders

Legendary photographer Weegee became famous for photographing murder scenes in New York in stark detail. And now we can bring you the entomological equivalent, thanks to Volker Steger, a photographer based in Munich, Germany. He found a way of getting the bugs killed by his car into a scanning electron microscope, revealing the wreckage of their tiny bodies in incredible detail. Getting the fragile remains into the SEM intact was not going to be possible by simply scraping the bugs off the windscreen, so Steger stuck clear plastic over his headlights. Once the dead insects had been collected, he simply cut them out and loaded them up. They were nice and dry already, he told me, presumably from the wind. But Steger found his driving speed was critical ??? between 70 and 90 km/h (42 and 54 mph) was perfect. Below that and nothing died, above it and all that was left was amorphous splatter. He says it seems the abdomen of the insect is the part that strikes the car first and kills it, probably because it is the heaviest part. The head and wings were often intact.

Naked Robot Toys

Who's this? Do you know? If you guessed Elmo, you'd be right! Do you know who this is? He's kinda creepy looking, isn't he? It's this crazy looking lion dude! Did you guess it? How about this guy? Can you guess who it is? What? A care bear? Can you guess this one? Do you have any idea at all? Yep! It's a purple monster! Ok, you'll never guess this on. Who could it be?