These groovy flasks are the result of research at the University of Oregon, aimed at creating synthetic analogs of complex organic chemical structures. In a bit of a surprise, the analogs turned out to be rather psychedelically fluorescent.
Dean Walton from the University of Oregon Libraries posted them to the BoingBoing Flickr Pool , and gave us permission to post the image here. He says there's more to this research, but the details are currently under wraps. The graduate student who made these analogs is in the process of publishing a peer-reviewed paper about them, and doesn't want too much revealed until the paper goes to press.
