Moon rocks, magnified: Apollo 16 samples shine in new book ‘Nanocosmos’ (Exclusive)

Prepare for an extraordinary journey into magnificent magnification with “Nanocosmos: Travels in the Space of Electrons” (Abrams Books, 2025), a mesmerizing new science fiction book by writer, artist, documentarian, and visual effects director Michael Benson. Here, size really does matter!

Within this hypnotic 320-page hardcover, Benson takes readers into an unusual miniaturized world exposed to the technological magic of scanning electron microscopes (SEM).

And here we have a couple of exclusive ones lunar shock glass images to share with you, taken from lunar samples returned by NASA astronauts Apollo 16 mission. Admire these diminutive jewels brought home from space and imagine yourself around the micro-mini scale.

According to the book’s official description, “The tiny worlds here, invisible to our unaided eyes, are if anything more intricate, complex and extraordinary than anything seen in deep space to date. These include radiolaria, dinoflagellates and diatoms, as well as many species of insects, microscopic flowers and even lunar samples from the Apollo program. The composite mosaic micrographs in ‘Nanocosmos’ merge art and science in a revelatory way, revealing a stunning sublimity hidden to the naked eye.”

Lunar impact glass is formed under the high heat and pressure caused by meteoroids hitting the regolith-covered lunar surface. These impactors melt the disturbed lunar soil, creating molten material that cools instantaneously in flight to manifest as glass shards, balls and globules.

Benson produced “Nanocosmos” using hundreds of selected SEM scans that he took over six years at the Canadian Museum of Nature in Quebec. These sublime paintings display incredible beauty, symmetry and design that defy all traditional descriptions.

In addition to art exhibitions, films and scientific endeavors into the mysteries of the universe, Benson was also responsible for overseeing those swirling cosmological scenes in director Terrance Malick’s “The Tree of Life” (2011) and “Voyage of Time” (2016). Additionally, he wrote a 2018 Hollywood history book entitled A Space Odyssey (2018), which chronicles the making of Stanley Kubrick’s enigmatic 1968 sci-fi masterpiece, “2001: A Space Odyssey.”