geekosystem

No, that's not the next wave of futuristic eye exams you see before you -- it's a still from a video of what happens when you activate the lymph node of a mouse with a laser to trigger its immune response. That's the video that won Nikon's Small World In Motion microscope video contest for the best moving images of tiny, tiny things from last year. Keep reading to see this and other awesome videos that capture the beauty of things that are usually way too small to see.

The Ultra Deep Field project of  Hubble Space Telescope just keeps making discoveries. Last month, it was the most distant galaxy in the universe, while today it is the discovery of no less than seven primitive galaxies that researchers think date back to the dawn of the universe itself. Which makes them, for those of you playing at home, pretty darn old.

Like many of you, I use a stop watch to time all of my hugs. Emese Nagy from the U.K.'s University of Dundee is also interested in the duration of hugs, and decided to use the Olympic games as a testing ground. With the help of an independent observer, Nagy observed over 188 hugs during the 2008 Olympics. From this, she concluded that, on average, hugs last about three seconds. Apparently this fits a larger pattern, with three seconds as a "basic temporal unit." As surprising as this information is, it's apparently not all that new.

It's no coincidence that you pop wide awake just moments before your daily alarm buzzes to life: Humans, and possibly all other living creatures, have an internal circadian clock that ticks along 24 hours a day. This clock controls everything from sleep cycles to migration patterns, and has even been found in life as basic as algae. Scientists previously assumed that these rhythms were connected to DNA and genes, but a new study from the Institute of Metabolic Science at the University of Cambridge has pinpointed the origin of the circadian clock to red blood cells (which don't contain DNA). The study was conducted by isolating red blood cells and observing their peroxiredoxin protein levels, which were then discovered to be responsible for the 24 hour clock. Much like we need an internal clock to chaperone our bodies throughout the day, individual cells need a clock to plan out their own routine.