DMC-FX7
ƒ/2.8
5.8 mm
1/8
200

Puzzle Series: What is this, or what do you want it to be?

17 responses to “What’s That? (50)”

  1. I was going to say a UV photo of a flower, except that the EXIF and camera type don’t work for that hypothesis.

    Wormholes. You’re really getting into the sci fi stuff in your funding! When can I go on a trip through one?

  2. I see a face, an arm, fingers…

  3. This one is hard.

    The gray things in the middle look like microphotography of seeds or pollen.

    The swishy things that surround them look like something flowing or in movement.

  4. I’m right there with you Nell. Maybe that’s right… Go a bit further with it, and we’ll see!

  5. It looks like something preserved in glass. Like the cheesy things you find in a gift shop.

  6. I’ll make a real guess, though not very strong.. A piece of popcorn sitting smoking on a lavarock with a vaccuum behind it. Doesn’t explain the purple though. Maybe those are aliens betting on the outcome.

    Or maybe a Pansy micrograph.

  7. A macro of a flower with your camera set on "solarize" or some such setting that changes the properties in how it looks?

  8. Rocketeer: It is a straight up macro shot. No modifications in camera or afterward…. But "solarize" is a good metaphor. =)

    Nell’s last comment was the closest… the swishy things are something flowing….

    I like the flower and bee imagery in the guesses…

  9. What about under water.. A something streaming some other things in the flow, with particles florescing purple other places?

  10. hmmm…. was that a guess, or some kind of abstract thing doing something to something? 😉

    The only thing that is under water is the scatter of little purple dots.

  11. It looks like dry ice in water to me, with the CO2 flowing away from it and carbonic acid bubbles in the water.

  12. From the thumbnail it looked like a zooming in/out of a bird in flight….

  13. Bingo Rocketeer !!! You gotta hand it to him. He is the Barry Bonds of puzzle space.

    This is a cluster of three pellets of dry ice floating on a shallow bed of dark blue water and shooting off geysers of carbon dioxide as they warm up. The dry ice is solid CO2 which sublimates directly to gas as it warms up (skipping the liquid phase altogether).

    These moving pellets have a similar appearance to a comet, which is a “dirty ice ball” (comprised mostly of frozen CO2) that warms up as it approaches the sun, creating a long tail of gasses. So the comet gets “solarized” =)

    It is mesmerizing to watch. Particles glide along the surface, spin, and merge when they touch. Here is a very cool video of the icy bodies spinning and shooting around, with links to other great installations by Shawn Lani at the Exploratorium in San Francisco. (I met him there among the exhibits at a Wednesday dinner honoring Craig Barrett as his stepped down as the CEO of Intel.)

  14. Way to go Rocketeer!

    My guess was really only meant to shift terms a bit.. I wouldn’t have gotten the dry ice bit, but had I been here to follow up, I might have had a more concrete one. But Barry there, Seeya! 🙂 Great puzzler Steve. And that video!? That’s very very cool, not just very cool. 😀 I think I’m going to have to go watch it again.

  15. Cool! Actually very cold…

    The video was awesome too. Thanks for a great puzzle, and the compliment!

  16. Whoa, Rocketeer! Nice guess! Cool puzzle, Steve. I can see it clearly now.

  17. whoah! nice puzzle and excellent shot from Rocketeer
    This is a great place

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