ImpressionsImpressions
And these are electron microscope images from the mostamazing littlecreatures I know: diatoms. They are algae, smaller than thediameter of one of your
hairs. They live in rivers and thesea, and make themselves houses of glass. The surface of these glasshousesis most beautiful - and the funny thing:
nobody, really nobody, knows howthey are doing this. How to make glass in a river, in the sea, when youare small, green and have no oven ? This is
one
of the secrets of NatureI'd like to find out. Little beauties - there are thousands of themin your hand when you go down to the sea and take a handful of
water. Just imagine, thousands ....
And once again, diatoms.
These images I made in theyear 2k inSanta Barbara, California. They show features of the glass shell ofdiatoms who used to live in an Austrian waterfall,
before I took them withme to the De
ath Valley and Las Vegas, to the Golden Gate Bridge and to LA.Tough little ones - not a single complaint and they all
survived !!
The feature in the image on the left looks like the holy syllable OMwritten in glass, doesn't it ?! And the man on the right, with eyes,
teeth and beard - on 10 micrometers, which is a tenth of the diameterof one of your hairs ....
The beauty of life has no parallel.
One of my two babies - Laus
i. Adopted in 2000 froma 86 year old man who couldn't care for him anymore. He is an architectandis always improving his home
(i.e. he enjoys to destroy big paper boxes,like here :).
And here, both of them, in silver. Lausi sitting on myknee, Hasi sitting on my finger. She is wonderful, a clown who talksand sings and whistles.
Hasi having a bath with me
in the kitchen. She enjoyssitting on the pipe and having a warm shower from the flower spritz - I have to sit there and spritz
for about half an hour, until my hand nearlyfalls off, and she still tells me "more". Afterwards, she is so heavy thatshe has trouble flying high up in the
air and therefore flies across therooms very close to the floor - making loud flapping noises and makingeverything wet :)
I shivered when I recorded this image. It shows the Carbon atoms of an area of 1*1 nm^2 (1 nm = 10 to the power of -9 meter =1 millionth of a millimeter),
imaged with my new cute microscope. Adream of so many people, my dream for years, come true here in my lab on a spring afternoon in the year 2000 !!
One of my ratboys -Waldi. I loved to have rats, but the tragedy is that they die so early - they were originally bred for can
cer research, as laboratory
animals, and therefore, they carry cancer genes in them. I had several lovely rats during the last years, they were all different, they were all sweet:
Fridolin (white), Waldi (grey), Fakidomiti (white and grey), Kitty (black), Hasili (brown) and Lucy (brown).
Sweet babies. Fridolin and Waldi were my
first ones. I saved them from being fed to a raven, when I was camel ridingnorthwest of Vienna - and Lucy from an animal experiment laboratory in Vienna.
I hope you enjoyed theshow !
Constructed March 28, 2001. Last update October 28, 2005.
. Impressum