Beautiful Science: What Your Body Looks Like Under a Microscope (+Photos)

Human body explored under a microscope. See what you look like up close—up really close.
Beautiful Science: What Your Body Looks Like Under a Microscope  (+Photos)
Micrograph of a blood vessel. (Shutterstock*)
Tara MacIsaac
11/13/2013
Updated:
6/28/2015

Imagine you have shrunk to a microscopic size and you are standing on a molecule inside a human body.

The molecule is as big as a planet under your feet. The surrounding molecules are so far away from you that they are like the other planets that surround Earth—visible only through a telescope or as a dot in the night sky.

Viewed with the naked eye, the human body and all other objects appear solid. But take a minute to consider that your body is made of particles that are constantly moving, with spaces between them that could appear vast from a microscopic perspective.

No one has taken a photo from the surface of a molecule as described, so we'll leave that view up to your imagination. But here’s a close look at the human body through the lens of a microscope.

Blood Cells


(Bruce Wetzel, Harry Schaefer/National Cancer Institute)

A scanning electron microscope image shows circulating human blood. The image captures several white blood cells, red blood cells, lymphocytes, a moncyte, a neutrophil, and many disc-shaped platelets. The lymphocytes fight disease by producing antibodies. Platelets form in bone marrow and are necessary for blood clotting. 

 

Nerve End


(Tina Carvalho/National Institutes of Health)

 

Retina (Part of the Eye)


(National Center for Microscopy and Imaging Research)

 

Skin


(Shutterstock*)

Cross section of a human skin cell.

 

Appendix 

 

 


(Shutterstock)

Cross section of a normal human appendix as seen with a light microscope at low magnification. 

 

Cancer 


(Tom Deernick via National Institutes of Health)

 

Hair Follicle


(Shutterstock)

 

Spinal Cord Neuron


(Shutterstock)

A silver stained spinal cord neuron. 

 

Tongue


(National Center for Microscopy and Imaging Research)

 
(Shutterstock)

 

Here are a couple bonus photos, not of the human body, but interesting microscopic views nonetheless.

 


(Dartmouth College/Wikimedia Commons)

 A fruit fly’s compound eye. 


(Shutterstock)

Plant cells in which green chlorophyll can be seen. 

 

*Image of blood vessel via Shutterstock.