Best Science Images of 2008

From National Geographic:

First Place, Photography: “The Glass Forest”

Tiny green diatoms create the illusion of a fernlike forest as they attach to their marine-invertebrate hosts.

Mario De Stefano of the Second University of Naples, Italy, captured this miniscule “jungle” from the Mediterranean Sea with a scanning electron microscope:

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First Place, Illustration: “Zoom Into the Human Bloodstream”

Deft manipulation of perspective gives viewers a detailed look inside the human circulatory system.

The relationship between a tiny oxygen atom and the giant organ of the heart was accomplished with a common painting technique that fits many scales into a single picture, according to Jennifer Frazier of San Francisco’s Exploratorium:

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