In the winning video from this year’s Nikon Small World in Motion contest, the root of a Thale cress plant appears to grow before your very eyes, diving downward as a camera follows along.
In reality, the video took 17 hours to record, and the root grew only four millimeters -- about half the length of an average grain of rice.
The scientist who captured the tiny documentary, postdoctoral researcher Daniel von Wangenheim of the Institute of Science and Technology Austria, studies the developmental and cell biology of plants. For this particular experiment, he and his colleagues were looking at how plants respond to gravity.
According to Nikon’s website, they used a confocal microscope, which focuses light through a pinhole for higher resolution images. The plant was placed on a rotating platform so the researchers could watch how the root adjusted to bend toward the earth as they turned it.
“One step further, this could finally help to successfully grow plants under microgravity conditions in outer space to provide food for astronauts in long-lasting missions,” von Wangenheim told Nikon.
For more fascinating and hypnotic microscopic videos, like sweat beads forming on a fingertip and blood platelets helping to heal an injury, check out the competition website.