Science Visualized
- Earth
Up to 220 million people globally may be at risk of arsenic-contaminated water
A new world map highlights possible hot spots of arsenic contamination in groundwater.
- Space
Stunning images of swirling gas and dust may show a planet forming
Infrared images show a spiral of gas and dust around a star 520 light-years away. A smaller, tantalizing twist hints at where a planet is coalescing.
- Health & Medicine
Florence Nightingale understood the power of visualizing science
Florence Nightingale showed simple sanitation measures could stop infectious diseases’ spread, a timely message given the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.
- Planetary Science
This is the most comprehensive map of the moon’s geology yet
Cartographers merged Apollo-era maps and modern lunar observations to into a new geologic map of the moon.
- Astronomy
New images of the sun reveal superfine threads of glowing plasma
Snapshots from NASA’s High-Resolution Coronal Imager show thin filaments of plasma not seen before in the sun’s outer atmosphere.
- Health & Medicine
Here’s where bacteria live on your tongue cells
Scientists labeled bacteria from tongue scrapings with fluorescent probes to glimpse at how the microbes structure their communities.
- Physics
How slime mold helped scientists map out the cosmic web
Tapping a similarity between a slime mold’s lacy web and the vast threads of matter that connect galaxies, astronomers visualized the cosmic web.
- Chemistry
Evaporating mixtures of two liquids create hypnotic designs
Through the magic of surface tension, mixtures of two liquids form fingerlike protrusions and other patterns as droplets evaporate.
- Life
How thin, delicate butterfly wings keep from overheating
Structures in butterfly wings help living tissues such as veins release more heat than the rest of the wing.
- Space
As NASA’s Spitzer telescope’s mission ends, here’s a look back at its discoveries
For more than 16 years, the Spitzer Space Telescope has witnessed the births and deaths of stars, charted the Milky Way, found faraway worlds and more.
- Life
How bacteria create flower art
Different types of microbes growing in lab dishes can push each other to make floral patterns.
- Space
A new map reveals radio waves from tens of thousands of galaxies
Radio waves from about 17,000 galaxies show that the peak of star formation, about 10 billion years ago, might have been more productive than predicted.
