Moon rocks, magnified: Apollo 16 samples shine in new e-book ‘Nanocosmos’ (unique)

Put together for a outstanding journey into magnificent magnification with “Nanocosmos: Journeys in Electron Area” (Abrams Books, 2025), a mesmerizing new science espresso desk e-book from creator, artist, documentarian and visible results filmmaker Michael Benson. Right here, dimension actually issues!

Inside this hypnotic 320-page hardcover, Benson takes readers into an odd miniaturized world uncovered by the technological magic of scanning electron microscopes (SEM).

And right here we now have a pair of unique lunar influence glass photos to share with you, taken from moon samples returned by the astronauts of NASA’s Apollo 16 mission. Marvel at these diminutive gems introduced house from outer area and wrap your thoughts across the micro-mini scale.

Per the e-book’s official description, “The tiny worlds right here, invisible to our unassisted eyes, are if something extra intricate, complicated and extraordinary than something to date seen in deep area. These embrace radiolarians, dinoflagellates and diatoms, in addition to many types of bugs, microscopic flowers and even lunar samples from the Apollo program. The composite mosaic micrographs in ‘Nanocosmos’ fuse artwork and science in revelatory methods, exposing an astonishing sublimity hidden to the bare eye.”

Lunar influence glass is shaped below the excessive warmth and stress attributable to meteoroids hitting the moon’s regolith-covered floor. These impactors soften the disturbed lunar soil, creating molten materials that immediately cools in flight to be manifested as glass shards, spherules and beads.

Benson produced “Nanocosmos” utilizing a whole bunch of curated SEM scans that he captured over the course of six years on the Canadian Museum of Nature in Quebec. These chic photos show an uncanny magnificence, symmetry, and design that defies all conventional descriptions.

Along with artwork reveals, movies, and scientific endeavors into the mysteries of the universe, Benson was additionally liable for supervising these swirling cosmology scenes in director Terrance Malick’s “The Tree of Life” (2011) and “Voyage of Time” (2016). Moreover, he penned 2018’s Hollywood historical past e-book titled “Area Odyssey” (2018), which chronicles the making of Stanley Kubrick’s enigmatic sci-fi masterpiece from 1968, “2001: A Area Odyssey.”