Seeing Science: The Art of Making the Invisible Visible

The power of images to represent the unseeable: stunning visualizations of science, from the microscopic to the incredibly vast.

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 visualization tools that can make the invisible visible. This bountifully illustrated book demonstrates the power of images to represent the unseeable, offering stunning visualizations of science that range from the microscopic to the incredibly vast.

With more than 200 color images and an engaging text by leading science writer Jack Challoner, Seeing Science explains and illustrates the techniques by which scientists create visualizations 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. Visualizations 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 visualizations, with intriguing results.

Jack Challoner is the author of more than forty books on science and technology, including The Atom: A Visual Tour, Water: A Visual and Scientific History (both published by the MIT Press), and The Elements: the New Guide to the Building Blocks of the Universe. A leading science communicator, he has developed scientific television programs and is the founder of Explaining Science Publishing.