THE MOST AMAZING SCIENCE IMAGES OF THE WEEK XXIX

A Zombie Worm And Other Amazing Images From This Week
By Dan Nosowitz and Rose Pastore, Popular Science, 17 May 2013.

Plus the most beautiful picture of Earth, New York City on Venus, and the world's largest (deflated) rubber duck.

1. Cloudless Earth

Imagine a perfect summer day, happening everywhere in the world at the same time. That's what open-source mapping start-up MapBox has tried to achieve with its new Cloudless Atlas project, which compiled NASA's clearest satellite images of Earth into a beautiful world mosaic. MapBox sorted through summertime satellite photos, pixel by pixel, and averaged the cloudless days to create a completely seamless map. See more stunning images over at Fast Company.

2. Hypnotic Hotels

Much like how repeating a word makes it seem like a non-word (pearl, pearl, pearl, pearl), hyper-repetition of objects in a photograph creates something of an unreal effect. Photographer Luigi Bonaventura snapped this and other images of vacant seaside resorts, all just as captivatingly redundant, at Jesolo Beach in Italy. Architizer has more of these hypnotic photos.

3. Duck, Deflated

They say the brightest flame burns the quickest. The world's largest rubber ducky enjoyed just a few weeks on display in Hong Kong's Victoria Harbour before mysteriously deflating overnight. More super-sad pictures here.

4. Fake Photo Of The Year?

In February, the 2013 winner of the prestigious World Press Photo of the Year award came under fire after allegations surfaced that it had been significantly altered. This week, forensic image analyst Neal Krawetz claimed his analysis of the picture's Photoshop save history proves the image is a compilation of multiple photos. Swedish photographer Paul Hansen denies the allegations. Read more here.

5. Skyscraper For Bees

Architecture students at the University at Buffalo designed this high-rise habitat for bees, built with perforated steel panels that protect the hive from wind while keeping the bees cool in summer and warm in winter. The 22-foot-tall tower includes a system of pulleys that allow beekeepers to pull the interior bee house down for maintenance. Read more about Elevator B here.

6. Orion's Fiery Belt

This photo captures grains of interstellar dust only visible to a certain kind of camera. It may look hot, but these particles are actually ice-cold - read more about it here.

7. Stop And Smell The Nanoflowers

These may look like CGI flowers, but they're real - real tiny, that is. [Ed. note: Dan, you're fired.] These are nano-sized flowers created by manipulating the tiniest of crystals. They may not smell nice, but they are gorgeous. Read more here.

8. Zombie Worm

This horrifying worm is an Osedax, also called a zombie worm or bone-eating worm, for a pretty obvious reason: it lives inside the bones of dead sea creatures, like whales, eating and mating and doing all kinds of other gross worm things. It was only discovered in 2002. Read more here.

9. New York City, Venus

Nickolay Lamm of StorageFront created these amazing views of New York City's skyline as it would appear on other planets - rusted, illuminated, blanketed with sulphurous dust, that kind of thing. Pictured here is Venus, but click through to Wired to see the whole series.

10. A Bear Ate My Camera

Videographer Brad Josephs set up a tough, all-weather GoPro camera to record some Alaskan grizzly bears. Grizzlies, it turns out, are curious, and after spotting the camera, one young bear attempted to eat it. Check out the video here.

11. Inside The Chrysalis

Ever wondered what exactly goes on inside a chrysalis while a caterpillar turns into a butterfly? Dissections can only tell part of the story - and these new 3-D scans show us what's going on in there better than we'd ever seen before. Read more over at National Geographic.

[Source: Popular Science. Edited.]