Each year, a global competition reminds us that the world we cannot see with the naked eye is no less alive, no less consequential, than the one we inhabit. This year, a researcher in Beijing turned a camera one hundred times inward on a child's airways, revealing the microscopic architecture of breath itself — and in doing so, made a rare genetic disease visible in a way that science and compassion both require. Nikon's Small World In Motion competition continues to demonstrate that discovery is not always a matter of looking farther out, but sometimes of looking more carefully within.
Microscopic cilia win Nikon's Small World competition
A child with a rare genetic disease was featured in the winning microscopic video of their airways.