Super Vision: A New View of Nature Book

What does nature really look like? Today, aided by the wizardry of modern scientific imaging instruments, we are able to see far more of the physical world than we ever dreamed possible. These devices can discern millions of invisible colors, look back in cosmic time some 14 billion years, peer behind and within seemingly opaque borders such as skin and bone, and capture events that last a mere trillionth of a second. Looking through their "eyes," we have acquired powers far more potent than Superman's X-ray vision: the powers of Super Vision.From microscopes to telescopes, from magnetic-field detectors to chemical mapping probes, today's instruments make possible an entirely new view of nature. Super Vision is a comprehensive showcase of 200 breathtaking scientific images that span the world of phenomena from subatomic particles to the incomprehensibly vast structure of the universe. The accompanying text tells readers what they are looking at and explains the underlying technology. Also included is a huge, groundbreaking chart clearly illustrating the relative sizes of objects covered in the book. At once a primer on the scientific worldview and a reminder of the awesome, multidimensional beauty of nature, Super Vision simultaneously informs and delights.

Author Bio: Ivan Amato is an award-winning freelance science writer and associate editor for Science News. His work has been published in many magazines, including Time, Fortune, U.S. News & World Report, Scientific American, Discover, and Wired, as well as in many newspapers. His books include Stuff, which was chosen as a New York Times Notable Book for 1987. Philip Morrison is a physicist who is well known for his numerous books (including Powers of Ten), films, and television specials (the PBS series "The Ring of Truth"). He is currently an emeritus professor of physics at MIT. He is also a member of the National Academy of Sciences.

Publishers Weekly

From the incomprehensibly minute movements of subatomic particles to the equally incomprehensible curve of the universe, Science News associate editor Amato has gathered a selection of images of processes, objects and beings that give the external world's inhuman scales their close-up. From a human immunodeficiency virus rising "like a sun over turbulent waters" over a lymph tissue cell to an Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar image of Washington, D.C., and back down to "the smallest guitar in the world"-a silicon guitar 10-millionths of a meter long, with guitar strings only about 100 atoms wide-Amato tours the limits of representation, and the many techniques scientists and other specialists have developed for rendering the invisible and the monumental. Fractals, microchips, biotechnology and global warming all make appearances. In many cases, the images have been garishly colored in order to highlight the details, sometimes too much so, and the author is obviously interested in comparing art to nature, directly so in a comparison of cancerous dog skin to Vincent van Gogh's Starry Night (plausible) and a cross-section of a dog's skin mole to a Picasso (less so). A series of black-and-white photographs of snowflakes (each one of which is indeed unique) have all the somber documentary power of a Walker Evans. The "Visible Human Project," uses X-rays and magnetic resonance techniques to completely represent the human body, in meaty tissue tones that make the neck look like a piece of chuck. The accompanying text is non-patronizing, introducing technical terms and processes carefully and making this set of visions super indeed. (Dec.) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.