Science Visualized
- Earth
Wonders of the northern lights
An Icelandic aurora catches a photographer’s eye and a contest prize.
- Earth
Bird’s-eye views of the globe highlight avian trouble spots
Recent maps reveal trouble spots for the world’s imperiled birds.
- Astronomy
NASA unveils space suit fit for Mars
NASA’s newly revealed Z-2 space suit is the second mock-up of a suit that NASA hopes will eventually protect explorers walking on Mars or drilling into an asteroid.
- Neuroscience
Visualization offers view of a nerve cell’s dispatch center
To get a closer look at how messages move in the brain, researchers created a 3-D visualization that provides a clearer view of how nerve cells communicate.
- Life
A new twist on a twist
Nature abounds with perfect helices. They show up in animal horns and seashells, in DNA and the young tendrils of plants. But helix formation can get complicated: In some cases, the direction of rotation can reverse as a helix grows.
- Cosmology
Universe re-created in computer simulation
The Illustris Project traces the detailed evolution of the universe starting from 12 million years after the Big Bang.
- Animals
Narwhal has the strangest tooth in the sea
Sometimes called the unicorn of the sea, the male narwhal’s tusk is actually a tooth. Narwhals detect changes in water salinity using only these tusks, a new study finds.
- Astronomy
Distant swirling galaxy dwarfed by violent star killer
In a mosaic of images from a telescope in Chile, dark dust lanes and twisting tails betray a history of galactic collisions.
- Earth
Seismic signals chronicle deadly landslide
Washington state’s deadly Oso landslide was recorded in seismic waves.
- Earth
Evolution of river systems
A river’s erosion downward and across a landscape is based on a variety of factors, including terrain steepness and the arrangement of tributaries.
- Health & Medicine
Second wave of bird flu ups pandemic worries
The H7N9 avian influenza virus, which first appeared in 2013, is sweeping China with a second, larger wave of illness.
- Animals
A tiny ocean vortex, with pop art pizzazz
Coral polyps kick up a whirling vortex of water by whipping their hairlike cilia back and forth in the photography winner of the 2013 International Science & Engineering Visualization Challenge.
