Cells divide. One single piece of life tugs itself apart and splits in two. It sounds like a purely destructive process, reminiscent of medieval woodcuts where the hands and feet of some unfortunate thief are tied to horses heading in opposite directions. But that's the macro world. On the micro scale, to split is to live. A dividing cell doesn't just rip itself to pieces. Instead, the cell first makes a copy of its genetic information. When the cell splits, what it's really doing is making a new home for that copy to live in. Make enough copies—and enough copies of the copies—and you eventually end up with a living creature.

Back in May, I took part in the Marine Biological Laboratory Science Journalism Fellowship, a 10-day program that gives journalists hands-on experience in what it means to be a scientist. The program is split into two tracks. As part of the environmental track, I went to the Harvard Forest, where nature is one giant laboratory. But, at the same time, other journalists were busy in a different sort of lab.

Steven Ashley is a contributing editor at Scientific American and writes for a host of other publications. He took part in the fellowship's biomedical track. Ashley and the other journalists fertilized the eggs of sea urchins and other small ocean creatures, and then used specialized biomedical microscopes and cell imaging software to create brilliant photos and mesmerizing movies of cell division and growing animals.

Ashley was kind enough to send me some of those images and movies. In them, you can see the tiny structures and every day processes that form the basis of life.

This image of a tiny crustacean called a copepod is one of the winners of this year's Nikon Small World photography competition. At Deep Sea News, blogger ParaSight explains how the photographer, scientist Jan Michels, got the shot:

That right there is one gorgeous copepod, one of the bigger and more important groups of planktonic crustaceans. It looks huge but is actually tiny; probably 1-2mm. You can see how much richer and more detailed the image is (although the colour is stained flouresence, not natural). That particular image uses a technique called confocal microscopy, which uses lasers and clever optics to achieve great depth of field (where everything is in focus).