The beauty of science...

The past year, one of my ongoing research projects has involved crystalizing a protein of interest to the lab in which I work. One of the unexpected bonuses (aside from screening a never-ending procession identical looking drops of liquid while hunched over a microscope, of course) is occasionally stumbling across beautiful, if unintentional, crystals. The following image is a layer of lithium sulfate crystals resulting from allowing one of the drops a was working with evaporate:

This, to me, is proof that science does not have to be cold and calculating...even the unexpected can be beautiful.