Tree of Science, January 18

It's Friday, so today a treat: a 3D view of the Tree of Science.

This image is viewed with red-blue glasses.  These glasses have a red lens on the right, and a blue or blue-green lens on the left.  These colored lenses allow light of the corresponding color to pass through while absorbing other colors.  The image is constructed from two images taken from two different positions, horizontally, with a common point of focus at the center.  The easiest way to combine the two images is to take the red channel from the right image and the blue and green channels from the left image.  These partial images are re-composed, ensuring that they are level and aligned at the focus point.

In one of my courses, on computer graphics, I have students generate synthetic images using this technique.  Students are always amazed by this simple technology.  I'm amazed that given telescopes that look far back in time and microscopes that identify individual atoms, the popular focus of technology is always on generating more vivid images and 3d reconstructions.  We can generate movies at high frame rates, but exceeding the physical limits of the eye and brain is a waste of effort.  At the same time, we have relatively limited understanding of what makes a representations of humans realistic.  (If you disagree, simply look at rendered images and special effects from a couple of years ago; they always appear unrealistic even though, at the time, we were amazed by their realism.)  There's a reason that successful animation studios have shied away from human subjects.

In fact, year after year, the most popular images from graphics classes involve transparent or reflective objects.  They're hypnotic in a way that makes you wonder if there's a biological reason.  My apologies, then, for this relative mundane offering.