The Four Ages Of Sand

God particle signal is simulated as sound

I'm so happy to see that the boffins at the Large Hadron Collider are following in the footsteps of 4AoS by exploring the possibilities of audio.

 

Nick spotted this amazing story:

Scientists have simulated the sounds set to be made by sub-atomic particles such as the Higgs boson.

When you are hearing what the sonifications do you really are hearing the data. It's true to the data, and it's telling you something about the data that you couldn't know in any other way," said Archer Endrich, a software engineer working on the project.

Click here to hear the sounds for yourself. It's quite an experience, even though these are just predictions at the moment:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/science_and_environment/10385675.stm 

Video Microscopy: Is this a bacterium or an alien?!

Video Microscopy: a purposeful Protozoan in a drop of pond water

Amazing to think these little creatures have no brains or nervous systems.

The sound track to this is my stepson Aaron, and at the end there is a rare snippet of UniM's voice as she tries to distract me from my scientific studies:

Amoeba in Darkfield

Here's an amoeba in a drop of pond water, filmed through the SP100 microscope with X4 objective in Darkfield. The pear-shaped objects are fungal spores.

It's not up to Psi standards but still amazing to watch a single-celled creature  moving around like this:

Question of the Week 75: What colour is a greenfly's eye?

The next step up from Macrophotography is of course Microphotography. This isn't so hard with micro subjects (subjects smaller than those visible to the naked eye) because you just put a cover slip on them and stick them under the microscope.

 It's a lot more tricky with macro subjects though (small subjects but visible to the naked eye) because they are difficult to illuminate from above and there are problems with depth of field. Here's my first attempt; hopefully you'll see improvements over the coming weeks:

 

40 magnification.

100 magnification

Unnatural detail on a diatom

Typepad wouldn't let me upload photos this morning, so I'll have to show you someone else's. This is from Flicker, and it shows incredible detail on a diatom. Hard to believe it's part of the natural world. His other stuff is worth a look too:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/38353423@N08/3571322335 

Starfish ID

Remember this unidentified "starfish?" Well my new friends on the microscope forum have come up with an answer.

 

It's a Stellate Trichome. (Ha I suspected as much)

Here's the link and further explanation:

http://www.photomacrography.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=7649 

Mosquito Culex Larva

Our pond (more like a deep puddle) is fizzing with tiny wriggling larvae. They look quite disgusting to the naked eye but stick one under the microscope at 40X magnification in darkfield, and they take on a special beauty:

 

A rotifer swam past as I was taking the second photo:

Stephanosphaera Pluvialis

This is something I found in our birdbath. I'm told it is Stephanosphaera Pluvialis, and who am I to argue?

 It's a Coenobium, which means it is actually 8 separate organisms working together. Take a look at the way it moves through the water. Mesmerizing!

Snaky bacteria

Here are some Fungal spores in a drop of water, and a snake-like bacterium: