Free Republic

These spell-binding pictures bring a whole new meaning to the term freeze frame. They look like painstakingly carved ice art that even the most experienced sculptors would be proud of. But take a cold, hard look and you will see they are in fact tiny natural ice formations, captured in minute detail. Andrew Osokin has captured stunning images of ice formations and snow using macro photography.

The latest research on water - still one of the least understood of all liquids despite a century of intensive study – seems to support the possibility that cells, tissues and even the entire human body could be cyropreserved without formation of damaging ice crystals, according to University of Helsinki researcher Anatoli Bogdan, Ph.D. He conducted the study, scheduled for the July 6 issue of the ACS Journal of Physical Chemistry B, one of 34 peer-review journals published by the American Chemical Society, the world's largest scientific society. In medicine, cryopreservation involves preserving organs and tissues for transplantation or other...

Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2003 January 23 Launch of the Sun Pillar Credit & Copyright: Lauri A. Kangas Explanation: On January 16, NASA's space shuttle Columbia roared into blue morning skies above Kennedy Space Center on STS-107, the first shuttle mission of 2003. But this is not a picture of that launch! It was taken on the morning of January 16 though, at sunrise, looking eastward toward Lake Ontario from just outside...