Science News

There's no way to take a direct picture of something as small and fleeting as a Higgs boson. But physicists can photograph its relatives, directly imaging atomic structures and improving our understanding of atomic physics. Now comes this picture: The first-ever snapshot of a single atom's shadow.

Patterns from space: beautiful satellite images of river deltas around the world.

In making the case for the raw aesthetic appeal of neuroscience data, I focus on the powerful ideas that have given us this striking visual vocabulary.

Articles about NEUROSCIENCE: http://www.scoop.it/t/science-news?tag=neuroscience

If, like us, you like fractals, then you will love the work of Frank Milordi, aka FAVIO. Milordi is a former Director of Engineering and Technology who creates mind challenging computer images based on the mathematics of chaos and fractals. You may be familiar with his work already, as one of his beautiful fractal images adorns one of the latest Plus postcards.

The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, one of my favorite space probes ever, takes amazing high-res pictures of the lunar surface. But more than that, it can map the elevations of lunar features using shadows as a guide. Knowing the angles of the Sun, the Moon, and its viewing position, it can accurately gauge the elevations of the Moon’s surface as it takes image after image, orbit after orbit.

A huge, copper-toned formation in West Africa dominates a mesmerizing photo taken by an astronaut aboard the International Space Station.
Dutch astronaut Andre Kuipers snapped this hypnotic image of the so-called Richat structure in Mauritania, as the space station flew over the Sahara Desert on the Atlantic Coast of West Africa. Erosion of the various rock layers created the ring-like features that make up the sprawling structure, but the origin of the Richat structure remains somewhat mysterious, geologists have said.

Jupiter and Venus from Earth
Image Credit: Marek Nikoden (PPSAE)

Every year, Nikon's Small World contest rounds up the best in microscopic images, taken by scientists and artists alike.

New project captures images of every ant known to science...

To photograph the very infancy of the Universe—back when it was mere seconds years old—you need an extremely complex camera. In an operation that seems not unlike the building of a backyard tree fort, the EBEX team at Columbia University, led by physicist Amber Miller, has spent seven years building a complex balloon-borne telescope. When it takes flight later this year, over the icy dunes of Antarctica, the hope is that scientists will be able to glimpse a little further into the past than ever before.

Neurophilosophy blog @mocost...

If you've ever heard someone talk about the Dark Side of the Moon, there's a decent chance they were actually referring to its far side — i.e. the face of the Moon that is permanently pointed away from Earth

Articles about ASTRONOMY: http://www.scoop.it/t/science-news?tag=astronomy

You come into contact with millions of different objects every day.

One of the “weirdest and least understood” areas of Mars, the enormous Hellas Impact Basin contains strange flowing landforms that bespeak of some specialized and large-scale geologic process having taken place.

When astronomers add up all the gas and dust contained in ordinary galaxies like our own Milky Way, they stumble on a puzzle: There is not nearly enough matter for stars to be born at the rates that are observed. Now, a team of astronomers led by Kate Rubin of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Germany has used the W. M. Keck Observatory to find evidence of just such fountains in distant spiral galaxies.

The highest-resolution radar image of Mercury’s north polar region made from the Arecibo Observatory (Harmon et al., Icarus, 211, 37-50, 2011) is shown in yellow on a mosaic of MESSENGER orbital images.