THE MOST AMAZING SCIENCE IMAGES OF THE WEEK

The Most Amazing Science Images of the Week, May 14-18, 2012
By Dan Nosowitz, Popular Science, 18 May 2012.

1. Bioluminescent Beach

This beach in the Maldives, on some special nights, glows with various bioluminescent critters - according to New Scientist, probably "single-celled protists and marine crustaceans called copepods."

2. Edible Brain

Scan your friend's brain, 3-D print the model, create mould with model, fill with chocolate, devour. Read more at Instructables.

3. Tiniest Car

The minuscule Peel P50, which was featured in a famous episode of Top Gear, has come back to life after nearly 50 years with two new models, including this P50. The P50 weighs 240 pounds, has a 3.35-horsepower motor, and can manage a top speed of 28 mph. You can also tow it around with one hand. Read more here.

4. Need a Hand?

Bristol Zoo Gardens in Bristol, England received several life-sized, animatronic dinosaurs this week. Moving them around seems to have been difficult.

5. Whoooops

This shot of three military planes - an F-15, an F-16, and an A-10, according to The Aviationist - wasn't taken during a thorough cleaning session. It was an accident! A spark from a welder triggered the fire suppression systems, releasing fast-acting foam.

6. Armored Lizard

This is the first time a (non-extinct) lizard has even been examined with a CT scan, which kind of surprises us: if we had access to a CT scanner, you had better believe we would be scanning literally everything we could find. Read more about this lizard and its peculiar scales here.

7. Metabook

Today [18 May] is Facebook IPO day! And we mostly don't care, since none of us here are early Facebook investors or had fictionalized versions of ourselves in any Aaron Sorkin movie. But it's a big deal inasmuch as nobody will shut up about it, so for posterity, here's how Zuckerberg announced it. [via Buzzfeed FWD] [Note: Facebook IPO has already taken place at the time of writing this post. Read an interesting article by Mashable, 6 Reasons Why the Facebook IPO Fell Flat.]

8. We'll Have the AstroTaco

So the Space Shuttle Cafe isn't actually constructed out of a former space shuttle - it's just a DC3 plane that's been painted to look like one. Of course, even a street-legal DC3 is pretty awesome, and this one serves food? Let us know the next time you're in New York City, huh guys? Read more here.

9. Psychedelic Space

This long-exposure shot - like, 10-15 minutes - shows the Mini-Research Module (MRM1, centre) and a Russian Progress vehicle docked to the Pirs Docking Compartment (right). More info here.

10. Blastoff

Launching from Baikonur Cosmodrome (how come we don't have a cosmodrome? That is the greatest word) in Kazakhstan, the Soyuz TMA-04M rocket heads to the ISS with astronauts in tow. For more photojournalism like this, head over to American Photo.

Top image: A Series of Exposures from the International Space Station Trippy. NASA: 2Explore via Flickr

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