A wood or heathland Ant, Formica fusca, holding a microchip
December 5, 2010 1:43 PM Subscribe
This post was deleted for the following reason: previously -- jessamyn
Aren't pretty much ALL scanning electron microscope pictures amazing?
posted by briank at 1:45 PM on December 5, 2010 [1 favorite]
posted by briank at 1:45 PM on December 5, 2010 [1 favorite]
It's fun to scroll down and hide the captions and see if you can guess what they are. I am apparently a brilliant scientist, because I have guessed many correctly.
posted by theredpen at 1:48 PM on December 5, 2010
posted by theredpen at 1:48 PM on December 5, 2010
First!
posted by nomadicink at 1:51 PM on December 5, 2010
posted by nomadicink at 1:51 PM on December 5, 2010
Clearly much has changed in our cold war against the ants over the past hour.
posted by pokermonk at 1:51 PM on December 5, 2010
posted by pokermonk at 1:51 PM on December 5, 2010
I like the way the fractal structure of romansque cauliflower makes it amazing, regardless of scale.
posted by bonobothegreat at 2:10 PM on December 5, 2010
posted by bonobothegreat at 2:10 PM on December 5, 2010
Kudos to nadicink for finding this mofo, and to OverlappingElvis for posting it again (cause I'd totally have missed it otherwise). My condolences on the upcoming deletion...
posted by solipsophistocracy at 2:11 PM on December 5, 2010
posted by solipsophistocracy at 2:11 PM on December 5, 2010
err, I didn't mean to suggest that you were intentionally doing a double, OE. Sorry if it came out like that. Thanks to you for finding it independently but later might have been a better phrasing?
posted by solipsophistocracy at 2:12 PM on December 5, 2010
posted by solipsophistocracy at 2:12 PM on December 5, 2010
Are these (and other color electronic microscope pictures I see) all false color?
The ones you see there are false color. Electrons hit a detector and the signal carries no 'real' color information. There is a 'spectrum' of intensity that you could assign color to ( a la heat map) But the color assignment is arbitrary.
If you were to collect an xray map you could assign each elemental signature its own color. But again, the color assignment is arbitrary.
For that matter, even making the images black and white (greyscale) is arbitrary. The image you see is a representation of the signal coming back to a detector from an electron beam being rastered over a surface. What 'color' should that really be? Shrug
posted by ian1977 at 2:13 PM on December 5, 2010
The ones you see there are false color. Electrons hit a detector and the signal carries no 'real' color information. There is a 'spectrum' of intensity that you could assign color to ( a la heat map) But the color assignment is arbitrary.
If you were to collect an xray map you could assign each elemental signature its own color. But again, the color assignment is arbitrary.
For that matter, even making the images black and white (greyscale) is arbitrary. The image you see is a representation of the signal coming back to a detector from an electron beam being rastered over a surface. What 'color' should that really be? Shrug
posted by ian1977 at 2:13 PM on December 5, 2010
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DO NOT GIVE THE ANTS IDEAS
posted by The Whelk at 1:43 PM on December 5, 2010 [1 favorite]