Seeing science : the art of making the invisible visible / Jack Challoner.

Includes index and bibliographical references.

Introduction: the importance of seeing -- Making the invisible visible -- Microscopes and telescopes -- Photography and electron microscopes -- Beyond the visible spectrum -- Fields and particles -- Data, information, knowledge -- Visualizing data -- Communicating information -- Passing on knowledge -- mathematical models and simulations -- Mathematics as a model of reality -- Computational fluid dynamics -- Art in science -- Art and Science -- Paleoart -- Space art.

"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"-- Provided by publisher.