This is a colorized electron scanning microscope image based on research by Dimitry Papkov, Yan Zou, Mohammad Nahid Andalib, Alexander Goponenko, Stephen Z. D. Cheng and Yuris A. Dzenis. The image was named one of Nature’s Images of the year in 2013, which is a very cool way to end 2013 for me.

Starting from an electron scanning microscope image provided by Dr. Dzenis’ team, I used photoshop to clean up and colorize the image. I won’t try and explain the science behind these fibers, but they are quite cool and definitely worth a read.

Image copyright University of Nebraska-Lincoln