SCIENCE ILLUSTRATED; They Look Alike, but There's a Little Matter of Size
By DAVID CONSTANTINE
Published: August 15, 2006
One is only micrometers wide. The other is billions of light-years across. One shows neurons in a mouse brain. The other is a simulated image of the universe. Together they suggest the surprisingly similar patterns found in vastly different natural phenomen. DAVID CONSTANTINE
Mark Miller, a doctoral student at Brandeis University, is researching how particular types of neurons in the brain are connected to one another. By staining thin slices of a mouse's brain, he can identify the connections visually. The image above shows three neuron cells on the left (two red and one yellow) and their connections.
An international group of astrophysicists used a computer simulation last year to recreate how the universe grew and evolved. The simulation image above is a snapshot of the present universe that features a large cluster of galaxies (bright yellow) surrounded by thousands of stars, galaxies and dark matter (web).
(Source by Mark Miller, Brandeis University; Virgo Consortium for Cosmological Supercomputer Simulations; www.visualcomplexity.com)
Photos (Photo by Mark Miller); (Photo by Virgo Consortium)