Topic: What is the most beautiful thing(s) that demonstrates science for you?

[Osidius The Emphatic]

I'm taking a poetry class and I want to write a poem about the beauty of science (there's a few people who only submit poems about how great their respective gods are, and frankly, I want to stick it to them and show science is more beautiful and reliable).
The only problem is I have much to explore still.  I've really enjoyed learning how insanely chaotic the universe really is and how Earth's life is a nanosecond long in respect to time.

I was hoping this community could share some of their favorite things that exemplify or express the beauty of science. I'm hoping to cover all facets like physics, chemistry, biology, math, etc. and show how they all connect with humans' paltry but diligent attempt to understand the universe.. so feel free to relate to any facet of science!

[vanAdamme]

My robot wife.

[Citizen Skeptic]

Electricity and electromagnetism. It's as close to magic as we can get. That anything with modern electronics works is a small scientific/engineering "miracle."

[AngleWyrm]

That it is now possible to find and communicate with groups of like-minded people, instead of being trapped within the context of your physical location.

[Sordid]

I'd say the most beautiful thing about science is not any one discovery or invention but rather the method itself, by which this imperfect ape has found a way of overcoming its own superstitions and biases to look at the underlying truth of the universe.

[Lancezh]

The creativity that is unleashed over the internet for pretty much ANYthing... meme's, jokes, modding communities, it is unbelievable if you think about the dynamic of it all and how much time and heart people invest in things they love. The internet in general i'd say...

[Guillermo]

Big Numbers. I mean, stuff like the age of the universe. Once you grasp the meaning behind big numbers, you can't help but wonder.

Evolution is also a big thing for me. It's amazing how a simple mechanism can get to such wonderfully diverse being.

[seaotter]

Big Numbers. I mean, stuff like the age of the universe. Once you grasp the meaning behind big numbers, you can't help but wonder.

Evolution is also a big thing for me. It's amazing how a simple mechanism can get to such wonderfully diverse being.

This. Nothing beats the awe of evolution and the wonder of the size of the universe.

[NekoNinja]

I'd say the most beautiful thing about science is not any one discovery or invention but rather the method itself, by which this imperfect ape has found a way of overcoming its own superstitions and biases to look at the underlying truth of the universe.

Mostly this. While evolution, neuroscience and astronomy seems to be the most interesting subjects to me, the method itself is quite fascinating.

I would write a poem about how we have created this thing called science, and it has sprung out like a tree continually branching out further to grasp onto concepts and truths about our reality that no one could have ever dreamed of. From galaxies and events billions of years away, to the tiny neutrinos that can shoot through matter. From black holes and dark matter, to the fight against retroviruses and discovering our evolutionary history back to it's common ancestor. Science has shoved us forward making metallic beasts come to life, and curing some of the most deadly diseases that have plagued us.

[Soldier of FORTRAN]

Thinking meat.

Thinking meat.

Congealed out of the probabilities.

Thinking meat.

Three and a half pounds of pinkish grey flesh, the consistency of flan, handily outstrips a super computer.  It sits at the heart of our existence, this meat, mediating every thought and feeling.  Circuity giving rise to consciousness.

Any time I really stop and think about the brain, I get this "They should have sent a poet" moment.

[Ah.hell]

Periodic Table.

Mendeleev organizes all the known elements by behavior and atomic weight and says,"hey whats with all these holes?  I bet there's a bunch of elements we don't know about."  That gets people looking(sure they were already looking but now they know what to look for) and now we've filled it all in.

[David E.]

A starry night.  The awe and beauty is much greater when you know what all those lovely dots of light are, when you realize how many there are, and when you think what we as a species have yet to discover.  It is magical, scary, wonderful and about twenty other emotions all at the same time. 

THis is Poetry

Are we alone?

[Shibboleth]

karate

[Citizen Skeptic]

A pizza with the radius z and thickness a has the volume pi*z*z*a. (but strictly speaking, it's not science unless you do an experiment)

[JuniorSpaceman]

I like all of these (especially the pizza  )

Mine is the fact that science has enabled us to see things that we never could have seen without human ingenuity - the fact that people have, with their unaided eyes, seen the whole of the earth from above it, or that we have cameras that can show us our solar system from the outside, or that we can watch bacteria going about their business. Every 'new' thing we can see, on the macro or the micro level, blows my mind.