SciArt Magazine - All Issues | Page 6

Secret Seduction (right) While most of us have never stopped to consider the potential beauty of pesky fruit flies, researchers at Lund University have discovered spectacular prisms of color splashed across their wings. Reminiscent of the flashy tails of male peacocks, the vibrant colors on the male flies’ wings, which are only visible against a dark background and under specific light conditions, have a big role in helping males woo their potential mates. Image courtesy of Luis Hernan and Newcastle University, UK. WiFi specters Though we spend our days walking through them, we’ve never really had an idea of what wireless networks look like—until now. Luis Hernan, a doctoral researcher at Newcastle University working on the Digital Ethereal project, was fascinated by these invisible networks and the ways we interact with them, reshaping them as we pass through. Along with an instrument designed to transform wireless signals into color LEDs, Hernan used long-exposure photography to capture fleeting images of these wireless ‘ghosts’. 6 SciArt in America December 2014