Whoo Hoo! It is time to celebrate. Why? Because it's Friday? No. The weekends and the weekdays are largely indistinguishable in the great joblessness of 2009. Saturday might as well be Tuesday. The reason to celebrate is that the ten winning photos of the "2009 Olympus BioScapes Digital Imaging Competition" have been chosen, and Scientific American has made a photo essay out of them. And it is MIND BLOWING in its AWESOMENESS.

The picture above is of a water flea. "Jan Michels of Christian Albrechts University of Kiel, Germany, who won first prize, used confocal laser scanning microscopy to create the image. Exposed to the laser light of the microscope, a dye that stains the exoskeleton fluoresces green, and some of the internal tissues fluoresce on their own, including the compound eye, which turns blue and red."

Some of the photos have accompanying video. Here is the clip that accompanies Dr. Jeremy Pickett-Heaps' photograph of algae cells, which placed third in the competition. It's called Sexual Attraction In Spyrogyra, and it is HOT, believe me.

As the introduction to the essay states, "Optical microscopy, energized by generation after generation of technological advance, continues to furnish dazzling proof that beyond the resolution of the human eye resides a sweepingly large world of small things, both around and within us."

I'll say! Here is the scene in Star Wars when Han Solo shoots a giant water flea on Tatooine.