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Titled "Disruption," this landscape is a plot showing a localized distortion in quark matter, the densest form of matter, possibly found in the cores of neutron starts. The moon is a decorative addition.--Andreas Windisch.
The earth and planetary sciences and physics communities at Washington University in St. Louis gathered April 15 to consider their research from an aesthetic point of view, admiring the stylish results that sometimes emerge, often quite unexpectedly, from the elegant mathematics of physical processes or the slow sculptural forces of the living Earth.
Amanda Bender at the opening of Research as Art . (Photo: Danny Reise/Washington University)
It was the second annual art competition for the Arts & Sciences departments. The competition, begun last year by Martin Pratt, a graduate student in earth and planetary sciences, was organized this year by Amanda Bender, also a graduate student in earth and planetary sciences. Graduate students Kelsey Williams and Sarah Valencia and post-baccalaureate student Jeniffer Gil Acevedo, all in earth and planetary sciences, plus physics graduate student Adam Archibald, also helped with organizing.
Katharina Lodders, a research professor in earth and planetary sciences, stopped to view a photograph of gas chromatography columns (see below). “This one I find intriguing because there’s a nice composition and a color contrast,” she said.
“I personally take photos of all kinds of things, so I really like that somebody pays attention to something absolutely unimportant that you normally don’t pay attention to until the photographer tells you to look. It’s just something that looks interesting and is an everyday thing in the lab. Beauty can be in anything,” she said.
Andreas Windisch, creator of the moonscape above, at the opening of Research as Art. (Photo: Danny Reise/Washington University)
“Research as Art” was supported by the departments of Physics and Earth and Planetary Sciences, the McDonnell Center for the Space Sciences, and the Geographic Information Systems office, which printed the images.
Here are the winners plus some other entries that caught our eye. Click on a tile to see a larger image and a caption. (Missing is Ryan Murphy’s Lego model of the SuperTiger cosmic ray detector, which won the Physics Faculty/Staff Award).
EPS Staff/Faculty Award. Images of a Columbia River basalt colored to pick out the main minerals, quench structure and other features. Part of a bench-scale experiment to see what would happen if carbon dioxide were injected into fractured basalt to slow climate change.–Rachel Wells
Map of seismic energy released between 1970 and 2010. Recognizable hot spots include: the Nevada nuclear test site; the Northridge earthquake of 1994; the eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980; seismicity in Oklahoma induced by fracking and waste-water injection; and a tectonic triple junction.–Martin Pratt
Physics Student Award. A computer simulation of the exicitons (bound electron/hole pairs) in molydenum disulfide. In effect this is an image of the optical properties of the material. –Shiyuan Gao with Vy Tran
Enormous crystals of gypsum, a sulfate salt, formed by the evaporation of seawater during the Messinian salt crisis when the Mediterranean evaporated completely.–Lauren Johnson
Crew 132 of the Mars Desert Research Station, a field station in Utah that serves as a Mars analog, returning from an EVA (extravehicular activity).–Michael Bouchard
Storyteller Award. Crystals of magnetite isolated from the primitive chondritic meteorite Orgeuil, which fell in southwestern France in 1864. Metoritic magnetite is one of the first minerals that formed in the early solar system. –Tyrone Daulton
Data from “engineering runs” of an experiment to test the going concept of the geometry of space and time. The purpose is to make adjustments that will remove noise but “after hours of staring at infinite variations of these images late at night, the oscillations and noise become hills and mountains covered in the trees and brush of a pixelated world rolling by as the data scrolls past. “-Adam Archibald
People’s Choice Award.The striking difference between a new and a used gas chromotography column–Melanie Suess
Fault gouge, unconsolidated rock with a small grain size, formed by the grinding and milling of rock by the Palomares fault near Mojacar in Spain.–Phil Skemer
Image of fake Moon rock made in an attempt to recreate the composition, mineralogy and petrology of a rock (12032,366-18) collected by the Apollo 12 mission.–Amanda Stadermann
Endless volcanism on Jupiter’s moon Io. This computer model illustrates the result of all that deep compression (the hotter the color, the more compressed); thrust faults break to the surface, throwing it into extension.–William McKinnon
The crystal lattice (regular arrangement of atoms) unzipping and reforming as quartzite is deformed at high temperature, a micro-scale process that drives planet-scale deformation. –Andrew Cross
EPS Student Award.Marathon Valley on Mars seen as the Opportunity rover sees it, as separate camera images are stitched together and color from a different camera is overlaid on black-and-white frames.–Valerie Fox
Moon and migrating geese. “I didn’t realize the geese were in the frame when I took the photo.”-Randy Korotev
