I just felt like adding a thread here since there seems to be a fair amount of science based topics lying around. Post a picture, why you think its interesting/pretty and what it is. EG




This is a picture taken from inside a bubble chamber, those lines are actually sub atomic particles. The way it works is you take a big tank of liquid, put it under pressure and heat it up to exactly the boiling point, in that way as soon as any energy is added to part of the liquid that bit will immediately boil. You take 2 particles and make them go really fast and bang them into eachother in the middle of the chamber. When they hit eachother theres so much energy in 1 place that you get all sorts of interesting particles coming off, since these are moving through the super-heated liquid (the word given to a liquid at its boiling point that isn't boiling) they cause the liquid to boil following their tracks which are the lines you see in the picture.

If you do it inside a magnetic field then any charged particle that comes off spins, the tighter the spin the more charge per mass it has. This is the same process taking place inside the LHC at CERN, just on a much lower energy scale. Bubble chambers discovered the W and Z bosons which have masses of about 80 GeV (Giga-electronvolts, about 160,000 electrons or 80 protons). In the LHC we're able to give each particle about 10 TeV (Terra-electron volts) worth of energy.

Even subatomic particles like to draw doodles.

science dance science dance!...and Hahaha^^

That's art.

That's a cool particle picture



This is a rose with electricity being passed through it.

That is seriously cool, I wonder how the hell they did that

That is a fractal which is a symbolic representation of what the Universe is. The Universe is a fractal.

Haha that was pretty much my reaction when I first saw it.

This is unrelated and unfortunately I don't have a picture but one of the coolest things I've seen was when I was swimming in the sea. The sun was setting over the sea and the tide was just right to make water splash on some rocks barely sticking out of the water. The sunlight made the water that splashed up glow orange, it looked like flames jumping out of the water. It spun me out for a second because I didn't know what it was at first and it really did look like fire.

To me, nothing is more beautiful than space. (SSSSSSSPPPPPPPPPAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACCCCCCCCCCCCEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!)

Also here is a cloud that looks like the Starship Enterprise.

Science Laughs:

Science Beautiful:


This is a macro photo of ferrofluid (a liquid made from nanoscale ferromagnetic particles, which can turn magnetised very quickly), shot while it’s in the presence of magnets.

Great thread!


The expression of the α7 nicotinic acetylcholine receptor (α7 nAChR) in the hippocampus of a newborn rat pup. Imaged with receptor autoradiography using receptor-specific ligand α-bugarotoxin labeled with iodine 125.


The bad ass snake that produces the neurotoxic venom for the ligand. Don't fuck with this guy.


A couple pretty models of the receptor that show it to be a pentameric ligand-gated ion channel.


A pathway diagram linking the α7 nAChR to some oncogenes and supporting my claim in a different thread that everything modulates (or is modulated by) RAS.

Glaucus atlanticus also known as the Blue Dragon (for obvious reasons!)
This tiny 3cm sea slug power house preys on and eats Portugese Man o' War like it's nothing, and even collects the Man o' War's venom in the tips of it's "fingers", concentrating the venom and making its sting more powerful and deadly than the Man o' War's own sting.


And of course, considering the kind of website we're on, please enjoy this "anime-ised" G. atlanticus!

That sounds beautiful!

Kind of what you're describing, but not quite the same... The Yosemite fire waterfall.



"The spectacular view of the waterfall is created by the reflection of sunlight hitting the falling water at a specific angle. This rare sight can only be seen at a 2-week period towards the end of February"

OH WOW that's amazing, yeah that is similar and on a larger scale. I'd love to see that in real life.