io9: Science Art

How the solar system's strangest moon, Iapetus, lost its rings

Ron Miller — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 16:35:00 PST

One of the weirdest of the solar system's moons is Iapetus. This is a medium-sized (1,471 km (914 miles) satellite of Saturn, orbiting about 3,561,300 km (2,213,000 miles) from the planet. Seen from the surface of Iapetus, Saturn looms about four times larger than a full Moon in Earth's sky. More »

The Astounding Photos that Made America Fall in Love with Science

Charlie Jane Anders — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 16:00:00 PST

Fritz Goro was one of the most important science photographers of all time, capturing the huge scientific advances after World War II, and the start of the Space Race. And now Life Magazine has a breathtaking gallery of Goro's most unforgettable images, which show us the cutting-edge science of the 1950s and 1960s. They're beautiful, but they also illuminate the world we live in today. More »

Perhaps the Most Beautiful Undersea Photography We've Ever Seen

Charlie Jane Anders — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 16:00:00 PST

Russian photographer Alexander Semenov creates photographs of marine life that just burst with color and energy. You may have understood, on some intellectual level, that the ocean depths are an ecosystem, teeming with life and all connected. But looking at these stunning photos will make you see it in a new way. More »

10 Images That Changed the Course of Science (And One That Is About To)

Annalee Newitz and Sophie Bushwick — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 10:00:00 PST

One image can change the way we see the world, especially in science. From photographs of movement that's too fast for the human eye to perceive, to atomic force microscope images of atomic bonds, pictures created by new technologies have often catalyzed scientific discovery. More than tools of discovery, though, images can help scientists communicate the reality of what they study to each other and the public. More »

Parasites, deadly bugs and fungi are more beautiful than you could possibly imagine

Charlie Jane Anders — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 17:00:00 PST

We've all seen totally gorgeous microscopy photos before — but there's still something startling about seeing an arresting picture of a beautiful lattice, only to realize it's a set of mutated cells. Or an insect slowly murdering another insect. Or a horrible parasite, feeding off its host. Part of the thrill of microscopic photos is seeing the loveliness in nature's many killers and things we might consider abominations. More »

And Now, an E. coli Bacterium That's Fifteen Feet Long

Alasdair Wilkins — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 17:00:00 PDT

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It seems strangely appropriate to spend some time on the scariest day of the year examining the world's largest model of the notorious E. coli bacterium. This model is two million times larger than E. coli itself. More »

The year's best wildlife photos will break your heart

Charlie Jane Anders — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 15:25:14 PDT

This monkey is insanely cute and lovable — and endangered. This is a young golden snub-nosed monkey, high up in China's Qinling Mountains, keeping its extremities as warm as possible, while its mother isn't around. Poor lonely monkey. But that's not the most distressing of the year's best wildlife photos, from the Veolia Environnement Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition. More »

Meet the Melting Vitruvian Man

Robert T. Gonzalez — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 11:44:00 PDT

How do you draw attention to the Earth's dwindling supply of Arctic Sea ice? Simple: slap a gigantic naked man on it. More »

Canvassing the Universe: How Artists Create Scientifically Accurate Images of Faraway Worlds

Ron Miller — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 07:00:00 PDT

Astronomical artist Ron Miller has worked with scientists and space agencies to create gorgeous images of planets, stars, and distant galaxies. In this essay, he explains how he creates amazing worlds from scientific data, and shows us a few of his favorite pieces of space art. More »

A beautiful reminder that physics is everywhere, even in soap

Robert T. Gonzalez — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 18:00:00 PDT

You're looking at a figure from a paper titled "Visualization of flow patterns past various objects in two-dimensional flow using soap film," published in the latest issue of Physics of Fluids. ([Very] hi-res version available here.) The authors write: More »

How did this giant animal skeleton get into a nice suburban home?

Charlie Jane Anders — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 08:30:00 PDT

Photographer Marc da Cuhna Lopes imagines a desolate future in which people are gone, and somehow giant animal skeletons have taken over our world. But don't panic — that's not really a person-sized animal that somehow died while perched on a bed. It's an illusion of scale. More »

All the Coolest Farscape Fan Art and Cosplay

Katharine Trendacosta and Charlie Jane Anders — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 11:00:00 PDT

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Farscape has been gone for our screens for seven years, since the Peacekeeper Wars miniseries, but the love goes on. A host of loyal fans continue to celebrate the awesomeness of John Crichton, Aeryn Sun and the rest of the Moya's crew. More »

Breathtaking time-lapse video shows two years of nature in constant flux

Charlie Jane Anders — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 16:00:00 PDT

Prepare to be blown away by the constantly shifting glory of nature. Photographer Henry Jun Wah Lee with Evosia Studios has collected two years worth of gorgeous moments in one four-minute time lapse video that takes our breath away. More »

Horde of 100 radiation suit-clad specters invades German music festival

Cyriaque Lamar — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 11:15:31 PDT

The Dockville Music Festival in Hamburg it the host of some pretty high concept art installations, such as this subterranean tiny town. Another piece on display this year was this eerie army of radiation workers, who spent the festival forever frozen and glowing. More »

This is what happens when you invite 40 vultures to dinner

Cyriaque Lamar — Mon, 29 Aug 2011 14:15:00 PDT

For her video project In Ictu Oculi, artist Greta Alfaro set a table with a lovely dinner in the middle of nowhere and waited. What was she waiting for? Why, for a ravenous flock of several dozen carrion birds to drop by for a snack, of course. This meal goes from amusing to terrifying in under two minutes. More »

This is bullet-proof human skin - made from spider silk and goat milk. Yes, really.

Esther Inglis-Arkell — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 07:00:00 PDT

Jalila Essaidi is testing the limits of human endurance, and it starts by having to milk spider-goats. Spider goats are otherwise innocent-looking goats that have been genetically engineered to produce milk packed with the protein made in spider's silk. (There is no definitive proof that this also gives them a propensity to skitter up walls or hide out in your sock drawer, but I think it does.) More »

LEGO Dinosaur terrorizes city, at least until LEGO asteroid turns up

Charlie Jane Anders — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 13:45:57 PDT

Check out this amazing statue of a dinosaur made out of LEGO. This guy is 8.5 feet tall, and made out of 62,500 individual LEGO pieces. The amount of detail and coloring is pretty phenomenal. More »

If Tesla coils appeared in the Matrix, they'd look like this

Cyriaque Lamar — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 16:35:00 PDT

Everyone loves a Tesla coil. Photographer Rob Flickenger is such an aficionado that he photographed one blazing à la "bullet time" from The Matrix. 100+ Tesla coils blasting in the background of every other scene would've improved the sequels immensely. More »

Proteins are beautiful

Annalee Newitz — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 17:39:31 PDT

Inside your body, proteins are a kind of communications system, allowing DNA to pass information and energy back and forth. Every protein is a specific message from one molecule to another. And the information is expressed via the strange folds and twists of each protein's structure. They look like beautifully folded ribbons, and you can gaze at their sublime spirals on the Beautiful Proteins blog, created by Mike Tyka. This is microbiological fetishism at its finest. More »

"Picturing Science" exhibit reveals the artistic beauty of scientific research

Alasdair Wilkins — Sun, 19 Jun 2011 13:00:00 PDT

New York City's American Museum of Natural History is about to unveil a new exhibition spotlighting the artsy side of science. In this video, the curators behind the exhibition explain why they're taking a good long look at scientific beauty. More »

The art of a Manhattan Project engineer whose nightmares led him to quit atomic research

Katharine Trendacosta — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 13:00:00 PDT

If you played a small part in the Manhattan Project and had a nightmare about the world destroying itself, what would you do? More »

Womanimal: The Freaky Beauty of Half-Human, Half-Animal Creatures

Meredith Woerner — Mon, 09 May 2011 16:34:15 PDT

Everybody loves a good human-animal crossbreed. So we were thrilled to find some gorgeous, exciting art featuring cat girls, fish women, were people and more. Check out our favorites below. More »

The dissected body of a murderer becomes a terrifying ghost haunting the city streets

Charlie Jane Anders — Wed, 04 May 2011 17:30:00 PDT

Convicted murderer Joseph Paul Jernigan was executed in Texas on August 5, 1993, at 12:31. Jernigan donated his body to science, and it was sliced into 1,871 milimeter-thick segments. Now a new photo project puts him back together. More »

Japanese graffiti artist adds Fukushima disaster to famous A-bomb mural

Charlie Jane Anders — Mon, 02 May 2011 16:30:00 PDT

One of the most famous pieces of art in Tokyo is "Myth of Tomorrow," a mural by Picasso-influenced artist Taro Okamoto, depicting the horrors of the atomic bomb. Over the weekend, someone added a new panel to the mural. More »

The first Artist In Residence at SETI Institute creates haunting alien shapes

Charlie Jane Anders — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 07:00:00 PDT

The SETI Institute is dedicated to finding extraterrestrial life, so it's perhaps fitting that SETI's first Artist In Residence creates art that looks utterly alien. Charles Lindsay, a former photojournalist, has developed a new form of art called CARBON. More »

Only one artist dares to capture alien creatures in their natural habitat

Charlie Jane Anders — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 08:00:00 PDT

Plenty of artists and would-be naturalists are content to observe extraterrestrial beings from a discreet distance — perhaps a few miles away, via hyperzoom. But only artist Alex Ries, aka Abiogenesis, is willing to approach these creatures and paint them. More »

Trilobite boy remembers when the Cambrian was cool

Annalee Newitz — Mon, 21 Mar 2011 08:00:00 PDT

In the surreal scientific illustrations of Glendon Mellow, human bodies merge with those of our ancient ancestors - like trilobites and dimetrodons. The ancient Cretaceous oceans glow with a strange light, and dinosaur skulls are gorgeous. Take a look. More »

Friday Space-Cat Blogging: The cutest extraterrestrial art in a dozen galaxies

Charlie Jane Anders — Fri, 18 Mar 2011 15:58:34 PDT

Do six eyes make cats better at playing with nano-fiber yarn? That's just one of the important questions raised by a new exhibition of space-themed artworks that opened last night. Prepare for cuteness! More »

The Strange Cuteness of Insect Portraits

Charlie Jane Anders — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 08:30:00 PST

Usually when you see extreme close-ups of insects, they look like terrifying monsters. The segmented eyes, the tiny cilia, the barbed limbs, and so on. But award-winning photographer Igor Siwanowicz manages to make his insect micrography... cute? More »

Artists use genetic engineering to turn author William S. Burrough's shit into a new lifeform

Annalee Newitz — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 12:00:00 PST

William S. Burroughs wrote a number of mindfuck novels in the twentieth century, most memorably Naked Lunch, later adapted into an equally mindfucky movie about bug-powder snorting aliens by David Cronenberg. The author has become a cult legend among the postmodern lit set, and now a team of artists has decided to immortalize Burroughs with bio-art project straight out of one of his novels. More »

Ripples in a sea that's only a nanometer deep

Annalee Newitz — Mon, 21 Feb 2011 07:40:00 PST

This blue sea isn't made of water, and it's only a nanometer deep. It's one of several amazing works of science art that just won a contest sponsored by Science magazine and the National Science Foundation. We've got a few of the coolest images, plus the weird story behind this shimmering blue vision from the world beyond what our eyes can see. More »

Amazing video explains evolution by showing 500 people tracing a line

Alasdair Wilkins — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 17:02:57 PST

This video depicts 500 people trying to do what should be an extraordinarily simple task: trace over an existing line. But as each person was asked to copy the previous person's effort, the original straight line morphed into a chaotic mess of random squiggles. We're not saying this is exactly like how evolution works, but this is a pretty great depiction of how random errors and mutations can accumulate over time.

Over a century ago, the giant cuttlefish put up a spectacular fight

Annalee Newitz — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 07:30:00 PST

This is an illustration of a giant cuttlefish battling brave sailors, depicted in a popular science book from 1872, called The Ocean World, by Louis Figuier. And that's not the least of the weirdness that lurks in Figuier's book. More »

Artist uses NASA technology to capture the cosmic beauty of flowers in extreme detail

Charlie Jane Anders — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 08:30:00 PST

Flowers look like solar flares and stellar eruptions when you photograph them in intense detail, using techniques developed by NASA for imaging the surface of Mars. Photographer David Leaser developed a new process, based on NASA's tech among other things, which he uses to capture the unsettling beauty of flowers up close. You can see every hair, every drop of nectar, and every line of a flower, from a bee's eye view. More »

CERN photos look like set pics from the most stylish science fiction film of the year

Charlie Jane Anders — Thu, 03 Feb 2011 08:30:00 PST

CERN may not have discovered the "God particle," but these photos of the facility by engineer Ricardo Hurtubia are almost enough to inspire religious levels of awe. Glowy energy balls, weird shapes, trippy lights... it's all like the mind-bending science fiction film we've been waiting for. Appropriately, almost every photo is labeled "science fiction" on Hurtubia's Flickr stream. More »

Optimistic Artwork About the World after People

Charlie Jane Anders — Tue, 18 Jan 2011 15:00:00 PST

Adam Friedman's joyous, insane artwork depicts civilization crumbling in nonsense vistas that look like something out of M.C. Escher. His aim is to compress millions of years of geological time into a single image. More »

Awesome time-lapse photo turns Greek landmass into newest, weirdest planet

Alasdair Wilkins — Mon, 17 Jan 2011 10:00:00 PST

This might look like a strange work of modern art (or possibly a secret level in Super Mario Galaxy), but everything in this photo of the Greek promontory Sounio is completely real. Not convinced? We'll explain what's going on here. More »

Is it degrading to feature actual human brains in your art?

Charlie Jane Anders — Mon, 17 Jan 2011 06:30:00 PST

Can artists display actual human brain tissue alongside their brain-related art? Or is this objectifying the brain? An exhibition in Britain has caused an uproar, with one politician calling brain art "disrespectful" and "unacceptable." More »

Concert posters for scientist rock stars

Annalee Newitz — Mon, 10 Jan 2011 07:30:00 PST

What if we lived in a universe where scientists were neo-psychedelic rock stars and played gigs in college towns? The University of North Carolina's biology department has the answer. More »

The sun's journey through the year makes an infinity shape

Charlie Jane Anders — Fri, 31 Dec 2010 16:11:30 PST

Hungarian photographer Tamas Ladanyi photographed the sun's position at 9 AM GMT every ten days in 2010, and the result is this striking infinity symbol in the sky, known as an analemma. [APOD, thanks Roklimber!] More »