Microcosmos by Brandon Broll

Microcosmos takes readers into a secret world of extreme close-ups. Some subjects have been magnified by as much as 22million times.
Compiled by London-based science author Brandon Broll, Microcosmos takes a piercing look at the everyday in six sections including Zoology, The Human Body and Botanics.
Taken by over 30 ‘microscopists’ using a variety of powerful microscopes, the book charters a voyage through a miniature world showing the unlikeliest parts of our lives in minuscule detail.

Colourful clutter: Magnified 22million times, this microscopic photo is of household dust containing long hairs such as cat fur, twisted synthetic and woollen fibres, a pollen grain, plant, serrated insect scales and insect remains.

Close encounter: Nylon hooks and loops interweave to form the material more commonly known as Velcro

Electronic wizardry: This photo – or, more precisely, scanning electron micrograph (SEM) – is of the surface of a silicon microchip

Cosmic: What may look like a filmmaker’s vision of an apocalyptic world is actually a cigarette paper. The blue crystals are additives that keep the lit cigarette burning by producing oxygen

Magnified seed: Perhaps not as surprising as some of the photos, this microscopic shot is of human sperm

Enlarged 21 times: This colourful flower is actually of fimbriae, a fringe of tissue, of a Fallopian tube

Raised eyebrow: Eyelash hairs growing from the surface of human skin…. magnified 50 times

Another world: A clutch of butterfly eggs sits on a raspberry plant

The weave of ladies’ nylon stocking tights

The scales from the wing of a peacock butterfly

You wouldn’t want to meet a mosquito that looked like this. Fortunately, the insect’s head has here been magnified 160 times

Vegetable world: Actually looking like you would imagine it to, this is the head of a cauliflower

Contagious: A human head louse clings to a strand of hair

A corroded surface of a rusty metal nail appears like an alien environment when enlarged 600 times

The tip of a hummingbird’s tongue (left) is one of many photos taken by 30 ‘microscopists’ and compiled in new book Microcosmos by science author Brandon Broll
Readers can view extreme close-ups of items including ladies’ tights, the surface of the human tongue and the beautiful scales on butterfly wings.
Also included in this weird and wonderful selection of images are a rusty nail and cut human hair on a razor blade.
The spectacular visuals were captured using a variety of traditional light-based microscopes, powerful scanning electron microscopes which bombard the subject with electrons and build the image using a computer and transmission electro microscopes.
South African Broll, who specialises in science and health writing, said: ‘The book will show readers the beauty of what is too small to see with the naked eye.
‘The majority of the 203 images are from scanning electron microscopes, and this is the reason the book is so visually stunning
‘Light microscopes and transmission electron microscopes require that materials be sliced thinly, or trapped under glass before being examined.
‘In contrast, the scanning electron microscope reveals a world familiar to the way we naturally see things, a world with outer surfaces and in three dimensions.’
The other three sections, ‘minerals’, ‘technology’, and ‘micro-organisms’ delve deeper into the tiny world existing under our noses.

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