Publisher's Synopsis
We live among patterns of delicate beauty and exquisite chaos that our eyes can't detect; we are surrounded by invisible particles and shifting fields of matter that permeate all of space. Our very cells are intricate molecular machines, and the story of our origins stretches back through an unimaginable amount of time. How can we see the richness of what lies beyond our sensory perception? Scientists have developed visualisation tools that can make the invisible visible. This bountifully illustrated book demonstrates the power of images to represent the unseeable, offering stunning visualisations of science that range from the microscopic to the incredibly vast. With more than 200 colour images and an engaging text by leading science writer Jack Challoner, How Scientists Visualize Things explains and illustrates the techniques by which scientists create visualisations of their discoveries. We see the first detection of a black hole as represented by an image from an Xray telescope, get a direct view of DNA through an electron microscope, and much more. Visualisations are also used to make sense of an avalanche of data-concisely presenting information from the 20,000 or so human genes, for example. Scientists represent complex theories in computer models, which take on a curious beauty of their own. And scientists and artists collaborate to create art from science visualisations, with intriguing results.
