【新译Y宇宙】No.77 引人注目的图片揭示了微观世界的隐藏奇迹

Striking pictures reveal the microscopic world’s hidden wonders

Throughout history, humans have struggled to understand the realities that exist beyond our natural perception. Whether it’s the vibrant sensory worlds that non-human animals experience, the immensity of the observable universe, or the inner workings of the microscopic realm, there are countless wonders that humans are unable to see directly.

纵观历史，人类一直在努力理解存在于我们自然感知之外的现实。无论是非人类动物所体验到的充满活力的感官世界，还是可观测宇宙的浩瀚，还是微观领域的内部运作，都有无数人类无法直接看到的奇迹。

Fortunately, people have mastered the art of magnifying and capturing the minuscule. And every year, Nikon’s Small World Photomicrography Competition celebrates images that bring these diminutive worlds into view. For the competition’s 48th year, four judges sifted through nearly 1,300 submissions and selected a handful of entries that rose to the top.

幸运的是，人们已经掌握了放大和捕捉微小事物的艺术。每年，尼康的小世界显微摄影比赛都会庆祝将这些小世界带入视野的图像。对于比赛的第 48 年，四位评委筛选了近 1,300 份提交的作品，并选出了少数登上榜首的参赛作品。

Announced today, the winner is an image from University of Geneva researchers Grigorii Timin and Michel Milinkovitch that shows the hand of an embryonic Madagascar giant day gecko. Created using microscopy and image stitching, the result is a fluorescent vista that reveals the delicate complexity of the gecko’s hand, highlighting the nerves, tendons, ligaments, bones, and blood cells that work synergistically to help these creatures effortlessly scale walls.

这次的获奖者是来自日内瓦大学研究人员Grigorii Timin和Michel Milinkovitch的图片，展示了马达加斯加巨型壁虎胚胎的手。使用显微镜和图像拼接创建的结果是一个荧光远景，揭示了壁虎手的微妙复杂性，突出了协同工作的神经、肌腱、韧带、骨骼和血细胞，以帮助这些生物毫不费力地爬上墙壁。

Other images capture a brambly looking cluster of human milk ducts, a puff of smoke, and the fruiting body of a slime mold—an organism that looks as though it were yanked straight from a fantasy story. All of the winners are available for viewing on Nikon’s website, and for this story, National Geographic photo editor Samantha Clark selected 13 images that captured her imagination, demonstrated the power of microscopy, or inspired her to think more deeply about the hidden world that’s just out of sight.

其他图像捕捉到了一堆看起来荆棘的人乳管、一团烟雾和粘菌的子实体——一种看起来像是直接从幻想故事中拉出来的有机体。所有获奖者都可以在尼康的网站上查看，对于这个故事，国家地理图片编辑萨曼莎克拉克选择了 13 张照片，这些照片抓住了她的想象力，展示了显微镜的力量，或者激发了她更深入地思考隐藏的世界看不见。

“Seeing eye-to-eye with insects like this is always thrilling. And now every time I look at an asparagus, I might think of this one,” Clark says. “The winning image of the embryonic gecko hand is hypnotizing with all the layers of skin, bones, and blood vessels. And who knew the human colon could be so groovy in this flower-power image of epithelial crypts?”

“像这样与昆虫面对面交流总是令人兴奋的。现在每次我看到芦笋时，我都会想到这个，”克拉克说，“胚胎壁虎手的获胜形象正在催眠所有层的皮肤、骨骼和血管。谁知道人类结肠在这个上皮隐窝的花朵力量图像中会如此时髦？”

hypnotize 施展催眠术

vibrant 振动的

asparagus 芦笋

epithelial 上皮的