No, that’s not the next wave of futuristic eye exams you see before you — it’s a still from a video of what happens when you activate the lymph node of a mouse with a laser to trigger its immune response. That’s the video that won Nikon’s Small World In Motion microscope video contest for the best moving images of tiny, tiny things from last year. Keep reading to see this and other awesome videos that capture the beauty of things that are usually way too small to see.
Dr. Olena Kamenyeva of the National Institutes of Health took home the blue ribbon ins this year’s contest with this video of white blood cells known as netruophils responding to what they think is an attack on a mouse’s lymph node. It’s not though! Just a harmless zap with a laser. Silly neutrophils!
Syracuse University’s Dr. Stefan Lupold took second place in the competition with this video of sperm from two different male fruit flies battling it out for supremacy in the reproductive tract of a female fruit fly, which gets points for being both scientific and sexy.
Rounding out the winner’s circle in the third place spot is Dr. Nils Lindstrom of the University of Edinburgh with this time lapse video of a kidney cell growing and branching out in culture over the course of four days. As with most things that take four days, it looks much more impressive if you speed it up to just 20 seconds.
Psyched for more videos? Sure you are. Luckily, you can check out even more shorts at Nikon’s Small World site.
(via Nikon Small World)
- This gel moves under a microscope like it’s alive. It’s not though.
- We don’t know how this squid playing Cypress Hill through its ink cells didn’t make this list
- This is Google Earth for zebrafish embryos
