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We all know that life is beautiful. Total cliché, I know. Flowers are pretty sweet, you can’t help but enjoy a good sunset, and everyone loves butts.

You can see all of those things for yourself, though. The microscopic world is just as incredible, only you can’t see it with the naked eye. By adding fluorescent “labels” onto cell structures, however, we can have a look at what’s going on down there. You can watch chromosomes being pulled apart, a cancer cell metastasising, a fly eye develop; it really is an alien world. This is a technique scientists have been using for years in research, but the photos are so stunning that some can be considered works of art. Want to see a newt cell dividing? Or a video of immune cells rushing to a wound? The answer is, of course, “yes! That sounds super awesome.” So check out nikonsmallworld.com and let it blow your mind!

For most people, science and art are two completely unrelated fields. In the spirit of this week’s theme, however, I feel obliged to mention that photosensitive E. coli have been used to make photographs, and that a whole range of scientific analytical techniques have been employed in order to detect forgeries of classic works of art. Not so separate after all, perhaps?

But what would I know about art, anyway? I’m a scientist – clearly a left-brain, logical thinker. Right-brainers are the creative types, right? Uh, nope. Just to smash a common misconception, it has been officially proven that there’s no such thing as left or right brain dominance in healthy people. Sure, the different sides of the brain aren’t exactly the same – the left side deals more with language, the right side more with what’s going on around you. But, surprise surprise, artists can be good at chat, and scientists do pay attention now and again. When researchers looked at 1,000 people’s brains, they found nothing to suggest any “dominant” side. After all, brains are probably a bit more complicated than that. Who knows, maybe I could still learn to paint? That’s science, bitches.