🏆 This image received the Public Award in 2022.

#sciart #microscopy #crystals #chemistry #polarizedlight #scienceisbeautiful #artinscience

While polarized microscopy is typically used to study and identify crystalline structures, here the settings were adjusted to emphasize color and form, turning a scientific technique into a striking visual composition.

To create this image, scientist José Manuel Martínez López (@quimica_tech) placed a small drop of concentrated taurine solution on a heated slide, allowing crystals to form and spread.

But under polarized light microscopy, they reveal vivid interference colors, created by the way light interacts with their internal structure.

These are crystals of taurine, an amino acid that plays important roles in the body, from supporting the nervous system and heart function to helping regulate water and salt balance in cells. Under normal light, these crystals are completely colorless.

Taurine (2022)

A burst of color created from something normally invisible.

Understanding how these cells behave is key to uncovering how kidney function is maintained and how it can be disrupted in disease.

#sciart #microscopy #kidney #cellbiology #immunology #biomedicalresearch #scienceisbeautiful #artinscience

At the center, the bright orange bundle is a glomerulus, one of the kidney’s many filtration units responsible for cleaning the blood.

Captured by bioloigist Esperanza Hughes Salinas, the image is part of research exploring the role of immune cells within the kidney.

The vivid colors reveal different components of the tissue: blue marks the nuclei of cells, orange highlights a structural protein that helps cells maintain their shape, green labels nerve-related proteins, and yellow shows immune cells.

Glomerular ore (2021)

At first glance, this looks like a fragment of rock or a metal ore. In reality, it’s a high-magnification image of a human kidney.

At that moment, Rosaria was listening to Life on Mars? by David Bowie, an unexpectedly perfect match for a scene that felt more like a distant planet than a dish of living cells.

#sciart #stemcells #neuroscience #microscopy #cellbiology #scienceisbeautiful #artinscience

Captured by Dr. Rosaria Di Martino using an iPhone 8 through the microscope eyepiece (10× magnification), the image highlights the dynamic nature of cell cultures, especially during differentiation, when cells dramatically change both shape and function.

This reprogramming enables them to become many different cell types. Here, they are transforming into nerve cells, extending long projections called axons that begin to form connections.

In reality, this is a bright-field microscopy image of human induced pluripotent stem cells differentiating into neurons. These cells began as ordinary adult cells that scientists “reset” back into a stem-like state by introducing a specific set of genes.

Is there life on Mars? (2020)

At first glance, this looks like the surface of a distant planet.

Captured by Dr. Sebastian Augustin, the image highlights how even a process as functional as shedding can be breathtakingly beautiful.

🏆 This image received the Public Award in 2019.

#sciart #plantbiology #microscopy #cellbiology #plantscience #arabidopsis #scienceisbeautiful #artinscience

Studying this process reveals how plants control growth, respond to stress, and manage resources, a deeper understanding that could help improve crop resilience and productivity.

What looks like a cluster of glowing bubbles is actually a close-up of an abscission zone, the region where plants shed leaves, flowers, or damaged parts. The blue “bubbles” are plant cells, while the red outlines trace a lipid layer that marks the boundaries between them.

Bubbles (2019)

Plants know when to let go.

This image offers an artistic glimpse into the delicate balance between plants and the microscopic life that surrounds them, reminding us that even a single leaf is a living ecosystem.

#sciart #plantmicrobiology #microbiology #plantscience #microbialworld #leafmicrobiome #scienceisbeautiful

To create this image, Dr. Zigmunds Orlovskis placed a leaf of european beech on bacterial growth media and incubated it for 48 hours at 25 °C. As the microbes began to grow, a small fraction of the hidden community living on and within the leaf became visible.

Leaves are home to a remarkable diversity of microbes. Far from passive passengers, many of these microscopic partners help shape how plants grow, defend themselves from disease, and interact with insects and other organisms.

Yin & Yang of Leaf Microbiome (2018)

A simple leaf hosts an entire invisible world.

Images of healthy tissue like this are important for cancer research. By understanding what normal tissue looks like, scientists can better recognize how these patterns change as colorectal cancer develops.

🏆 This image received the Jury Award in 2017

#sciart #microscopy #cancerresearch #histology

The image was captured by MD and researcher Christophe Cisarovsky during a project studying colorectal cancer, one of the most common and deadly cancers worldwide. Getting such a perfect cross-section of human colon tissue is uncommon, which makes the natural organization especially clear.

The round structures are tiny glands, arranged at almost equal distances from one another and supported by surrounding muscle cells that help keep the tissue organized. This orderly pattern is part of how a healthy colon works.

Tentacle Flowers (2017)

At first glance, the shapes in this picture look like delicate flowers. In reality, this is the surface of human colon tissue.

Using ink on paper and digital collage, the work turns one of cosmology’s biggest questions into a visual reflection on uncertainty and the unknown fate of the universe.

#sciart #cosmology #darkenergy #astrophysics #spaceart #cosmos #scienceandart

The piece was inspired by recent observations suggesting that the properties of dark energy, the force believed to drive cosmic expansion, may change over time. If true, the long-held assumption of endless expansion may not hold.

The sequence moves from the familiar idea of a universe that keeps expanding, through a moment of instability and uncertainty, to the possibility that expansion itself could one day reverse.