From the very, very big.....

To the very, very, very small.....Ladies and Gentlemen a selection of the finest photographs of small stuff as judged by the guys at Nikon.

"Glowing-hot carbon nanotubes form an expanding orange ball in this image by Paul Marshall of Canada's Institute for Microstructural Sciences, a winner in the 2008 Small World photomicrography competition. The nanotubes are elongated, hollow cylinders of carbon atoms. To make a carbon nanotube--just 1/50,000 the width of a human hair--a piece of carbon (graphite) must be heated, for example by lasers or electricity. And sometimes, Marshall says, the heated mass of nanotubes grows like a bulb in the spring."

"Albert Tousson of the University of Alabama was recently testing a new laser microscope in his lab and put a petal of a lily of the valley under the lens, which magnified the petal 1,300 times--resulting in his winning photo in the 2008 Small World photomicrography competition. The enhanced color of the petal's red cell walls and green and yellow starch granules comes from the laser light, which causes molecules within these substances to fluoresce--the same phenomenon that gives objects under black lights an eerie glow."

"Cell-therapy researcher Matthew Springer took this snapshot of growing amoebas--magnified a hundred times--as part of his postdoctoral research at Stanford University.Springer wanted to know whether these organisms, Dictyostelium discoideum, would continue to grow even when deprived of a crucial motor protein, myosin. He discovered that myosin is only needed for the first and final stages of the amoeba's development and that, in all stages between, myosin is like a candy bar after lunch--nice but not needed."

"Using polarized light and 5 X magnification, David Walker of Britain was able to coax a wide palette of colors from the center of an ordinary CD case. Walker enjoys "showing how common objects around the home can look extraordinary when studied under the microscope," he told the organizers of the 2008 Small World photo contest."