BEST SCIENCE PHOTOS OF THE WEEK XI

Best Science Photos of the Week - April 7, 2012
By Live Science, 7 April 2012.

1. Visual Delights!

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/P. N. Appleton (SSC/Caltech)

From the colourful insides of animals to auroras on Venus and panda love, this week was full of visual fun. Take this "galactic Easter egg," the Cartwheel galaxy stands out against a backdrop of other brightly-coloured galactic bodies. The Easter egg appearance of this galaxy is due to false colours representing various wavelengths of light - ultraviolet in blue, B-band visible light in green, infrared in red and X-ray radiation in purple. [See more amazing science images]

2. Venetian Aurora

Credit: ESA

The same magnetic phenomenon that causes auroras on Earth has now surprisingly been discovered creating giant magnetic bubbles around Venus, a planet without a magnetic field. (Shown here, Venus' southern hemisphere, as seen in the ultraviolet.) [Read full story]

3. Animals Inside Out

Credit: © Gunther von Hagens, Institute for Plastination, Heidelberg, Germany www.bodyworlds.com

Gunther von Hagens, creator of the controversial yet wildly popular "Body Worlds" exhibit of dead humans, has expanded his penetrating vision by presenting "Animals Inside Out." In the exhibition opening Friday (April 6) at the Natural History Museum in London, von Hagens reveals the muscles, blood vessels and weird insides of animal corpses, like this ostrich. [Read full story]

4. Glowing Shark

Credit: © Gunther von Hagens, Institute for Plastination, Heidelberg, Germany www.bodyworlds.com

During the plastination process coloured liquid resin is injected into the animal's main arterial network. When the surrounding tissue is removed a perfect highway of vessels is revealed. Here, a surreal-looking porbeagle shark (a type of mackerel shark), which will greet visitors of the exhibition, has had its skin removed to show the intricate blood system underneath. [See more "animals inside out" images]

5. Texan Tornadoes

Credit: Brandon Sullivan - StormChasingVideo.com/TornadoTitans.

An estimated 10 to 18 tornadoes ploughed through the Dallas metropolitan area on April 3, tossing semi-trailers high in the air, destroying homes and pelting the region with hail the size of golf balls. [Read full story]

6. Panda Madness

Credit: Mehgan Murphy, Smithsonian's National Zoo

For all their cuteness, giant pandas are in a tight spot. There are fewer than 1,600 pandas left in the wild, and a new study found that more than half of the bears' already diminished natural habitat will be unliveable in 70 years thanks to climate change. Shown here, 3-year-old Tai Shan. [Read full story]

7. Dogs Are Only Human

Credit: JoAnne Haupert

Man and his best friend have something in common: Both get worn out by having to exert self-control and end up making dumb decisions, a new study finds. [Read full story]

8. Volcanic Plumbing Revealed

Credit: Thorsteinn Jonsson, University of Iceland

New research looking at volcanoes in Iceland and the Afar region of Ethiopia - the two areas where mid-ocean ridges, where Earth's tectonic plates are moving apart, are visible at the surface of the Earth - found that the underground caverns holding a volcano's magma aren’t buried as deeply as scientists had thought. These caverns, called magma chambers, also swell, shrink and pulse every now and then, yielding possible clues about the size and timing of a volcano's next big eruption. [Read full story]

Top image - Left: Another view of Tai Shan, the giant panda. Right: The elephant in "Animals Inside Out" exhibition.

[Source: Live Science. Edited. Top image added.]