Penitentes, or nieves penitentes (Spanish for “penitent-shaped snows”), are a snow formation found at high altitudes. They take the form of tall thin blades of hardened snow or ice, closely spaced with the blades oriented towards the general direction of the sun.

Artist Sergio Albiac has launched an experiment in generative portraiture that uses images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope to build up images of people

Only with a pencil, ruler and protractor, without the help of a computer, Venezuelan artist Rafael Araujo creates complex fields of three dimensional space where butterflies come to life and shells rise from mathematical spirals.

The NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations (NEEMO) 21 mission began on July 21 as an international crew of aquanauts splashed down to the undersea Aquarius Reef Base, located 62 feet below the surface of the Atlantic Ocean in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary. The NEEMO 21 crew will perform research both inside and outside the habitat during a 16-day simulated space mission. During simulated spacewalks carried out underwater, they will evaluate tools and mission operation techniques that could be used in future space missions, including journeys to Mars. (Photo by Karl Shreeves/NASA)

Paul Bond's art lives in the spaces between dreaming and reality. Drawing from the Latin American genre of Magic Realism where symbolic, surreal and fantastic elements blend with realistic atmospheres, they remove the veil on a world where everything is possible.

Makoto Chino eats a purple haze carrot as he works harvesting the morning's vegetables and fruit from his family's farm in Rancho Santa Fe, California August 12, 2014. The gravitational pull of Chino Farm is legendary. Since they don't ship, everyone – whether a top chef or a traveling foodie or a local resident – comes to the farm stand, simply called “Vegetable Shop”, on a dusty corner of this affluent San Diego County town, hemmed in by sprawling housing estates. (Photo by Mike Blake/Reuters)

If we were to burn NH4Cr2O7 with HgSCN in the Dark Ages in Europe and show it to anyone, it is us who would be burning next on a fiery cross of Inquisition. And it’s no wonder, since this experiment produces a truly marvelous result. At first, as you ignite the mixture of NH4Cr2O7 and HgSCN, all you can see is that it is slowly burning with a reddish flame. After a while, however, a crater is formed in the middle of the burning pile, and then, suddenly, tentacle-like appendages start sprouting from the burning mixture. And you can almost hear the scream of the mad occultist – “Come forth, Kraken! Come forth!” But of course, this is simply a chemical reaction that is called the "Pharoah's Serpent". It was also often sold in firework stores until people realized that it was toxic.