The Universe in 100 Colors

Description

At the intersection of science, art, and design, this must-have coffee table book highlights 100 mind-blowing colors that you’ve likely never seen before.

From Instagram sensation and self-described “mad scientist artist” Tyler Thrasher and creator of the popular Matter subscription box Terry Mudge, this book comes with a foreword by Hank Green.

This gorgeous compendium contains 100 amazing colors that you might otherwise live your whole life unaware of. These colors exist in the strangest of places, and serve extremely specific functions in nature, or were human-made with one goal in mind.

In this oversized, design-forward book you’ll find entries for each of the 100 colors, organized in gradient order, with structural and impossible colors set at the end. Each entry has a 2-page spread with a full-page image of the color plus snappy descriptions, and easy-to-understand category symbols. Some entries include diagrams. Even includes structural colors and colors outside the range of human visibility! Also included is a brief introduction to color theory, a myth-busting section, plus index, glossary, and notes.

Here is your universe in living color:
Cosmic Latte: The average color of the universe.
Dragon’s Blood: A tropical tree that bleeds red resin with incredible medicinal potential.
Sonoluminescence: A color created by sound!
Eigengrau: The color we perceive in the absence of light (and no, it’s not “pitch black”).

Perfect for anyone who loves science or art, and bursting with astonishing facts and stunning photography, The Universe in 100 Colors is a wonder for the senses.TYLER THRASHER is a self-taught chemist and botanist with a BFA in computer animation and art history. He spent much of his childhood living in greenhouses, which would go on to inspire his love for nature. During college Tyler spent his free time crawling through caves, which inspired a body of art that involved synthesizing crystals onto preserved insects and organic matter such as skulls. This quickly became his full-time job and ultimately unraveled a deeper fascination for nature and experimentation, which has carried over into the idea for this very book!

TERRY MUDGE opened the Stemcell Science Shop in 2016 with the goal of elevating the lackluster standard in scientific goods. After several successful years Terry launched his monthly Matter box, one of the most popular science subscription boxes around. He now spends his time hunting down fascinating pieces of nature and science to keep people tantalized by the infinite possibilities of the universe.Dear Reader:

Through my endeavor to find the most fascinating matter our planet has to offer for my scientific subscription box, Matter, I have seen many unique scientific phenomena. Color, the range of energy that fills the visible universe, has been a constant highlight throughout this journey.
From the intricate patterns and brilliant hues of minerals formed deep beneath the Earth’s surface; to distant galaxies creating grand displays of exploding, dying, and newly-forming stars, this vibrant range has not only illuminated my path but revealed hidden connections between everything across the universe, both known and unknown.
In this book, you will find not just a collection of colors, but a spectral celebration of the profound, the enigmatic, and the outright mind-blowing. Each color included here represents a mystery unraveled. From the mesmerizing blue of a quasar to the haunting glow of foxfire, the colors in these pages are the keys to understanding some of the most captivating phenomena in the natural world.
This book is a labor of love, born from countless hours of research, discussions with experts in the most esoteric fields, and my firsthand observations. It’s my hope that these colors will inspire you, challenge you, and reveal the interconnections to be found between everything in the entire universe. Now, it’s your turn to explore. Enjoy the revelations that await within these pages.
 
–Terry Mudge


As an artist and citizen scientist it’s only natural that this intersection would bring my career to the big questions about color. What is a “color”? How are colors even able to exist in the first place? I began a pursuit to not only understand colors, but to synthesize them in my studio/ lab through the wonders of nanoparticle science.
 
After dedicating several years of my creative career to synthesizing crystals and minerals, I decided to tackle one of the most alluring mineraloids of them all, the opal, that master conductor of the orchestra of light play. The journey to synthesizing opals is a tricky one. It’s an endeavor that requires immense patience, structural stability, and fine tuning to the degree of just a few hundred nanometers. My countless experiments involved late nights waving my iphone flashlight across dozens of oil filled jars hoping white blobs would reveal flashes of color.
 
It would take a solid year of tinkering and hundreds of failed experiments before I would create some of the world’s first lab-grown opalized insects and flowers. Along the way, I deepened my love of color and furthered my understanding of it. My obsession with projects that depend on color and light led to this book, where I can share what I’ve learned in hopes that you too can see what all the fuss is about.
 
–Tyler ThrasherCN

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