I have seen this claimed on reddit and imagur to be an actual composite image of a cell from "radiography, nuclear magnetic resonance and cryoelectron microscopy". Yet despite seeing it posted all over the inernet claiming its a real image I can not find a single scientific source for it. Anyone who can figure out if this is legit or not please comment.

@Science

@freemo @Science
Bonkers if true. They likely took creative liberty with the coloring, like is done with deep space images.

@melovida @freemo @Science well. It's common for a model to have color.
Like red represent protein "a" and blue represent lipid or something something. :ablobgrimace:

@deesapoetra @freemo @Science True. I think they do the same for deep space images, colors based on elements.

Follow

@melovida

Depends on how its imaged... Usually deep space images arent colored, the beautiful colors you see in nebula's for example are natural

If you see a colored image then its something like radio-waves, x-rays, or a non-visible light spectrum that would otherwise be invisible. Usually even then the image is just shifted and stretched into the visible spectrum without touching up the color. If there are two separate non-visible sources used in the same image they may intentional stretch the spectrum of each into different color bands so you can distinguish which is which.

You can of course have touched up images, but it should be obviously labeled as such and scientists tend to see this as a big no no in the "official" images at least.

@deesapoetra @Science

Sign in to participate in the conversation
Qoto Mastodon

QOTO: Question Others to Teach Ourselves
An inclusive, Academic Freedom, instance
All cultures welcome.
Hate speech and harassment strictly forbidden.