Science is beautiful

Bio-science books are extremely fun to read if it is written well, the books which trigger one's imagination and sparks one's intellectual curiosity are great ones. A few books i collected recently:

'Science is beautiful' by Colin Salter, first published in 2014. Many colored scanning electron micrograph, stunning and beautiful cellular level photos. 

'Human body close-up' by John Clancy.

 

'Immune' by Philip Dettmer, the author started a very popular channel 'Kurzgesagt' eight years ago, currently with 19million subscribers. The videos were made with vector art, with intense and bright colors, the videos give people a sense of warm feeling, yet educational and fun. The author is truly a wonderful science communicator, I remember high school bio class was dead boring, how the teacher presents the information could make a huge difference in killing one's interest or raise someone's curiosity which may open up a door for future path.

Now when i re-read topic about DNA, chromosome, it is mind-blowing to understand the complexity a simple cell is operating under. it is equally mind-blowing on how these bio-scientists figure out the mechanism with nano level material as small as 2 nano meters (DNA is 2 nano meters in size)  

 

The last book is ‘The Machinery of life’ by David Goodsell.   Amazing artwork on basics of molecular biology, a classic. 

Though it is exciting to look out for the faraway stars, galaxies , however, human body  is a real  universe full of wonders and mysteries, with amazing mechanism and unbelievable complexity , our body is like an ocean hosting billion of living  organisms.   Inside the immunity system,   there are immune cells which are constantly working hard for the body, fighting the endless battles with potential external threat and enemies, there are cell level communications and collaborations,  life and death  happens within our cells in every second that we are alive which we may not be aware of, many undocumented  stories are happening at each layer from molecular level to large organs, it  opens our eyes to what it means to be alive, there are questions were answered but more questions arise.  When someone passed away,  it is indeed  a big star is ending its dear life, somewhat tragic. 

In our day-to-day life, it is hard to appreciate the beauty of a human body which are constantly under stress for living and survival (the more intelligent the more stressful it is !) . It is  amazing that we share ~ 98% DNA with pigs and dolphins,  90% with cats, 80% with rats,  70% with slugs, 50% with banana, 50% with trees,  all the beautiful molecular structure and mechanism discovered that happens in human cells also happen in animal's cells, we are really not that different from other species living on the same planet, nature spins out different species,   we are all made with similar  materials and have a lot of common ground, what a wonder of powerful , cruel and almighty nature! 

Nature is God and we are an intelligent part of nature, maybe a  strange and odd existence as we are the only species that is using our intellect trying to understand how nature works . It is sad that nature creates intelligent beings yet destroy its creation and recycle it back like a trash :(  possible nature is just never satisfied with its creation, just like those human artists,  always trying to create something better,  oh well, we can’t argue with nature with our fate yet though interesting research are going on.  

 

Bio books really made me see life with a new perspective, everyone and everything on the planet is inter-connected, science is beautiful, we owe a huge thank-you to several generations of bio-scientists and technologists   for the bio field advancement and the unbelievable discoveries!  

There are many beautiful SEM photos in the book, due to copyright concerns, only post a few where you can find from google.