When I was a kid, I’d stare at images of stars and galaxies and molecules in the National Geographic only to be disappointed when I read the deflating caption: ‘Artist Rendition’. Ugh! Why I can’t I see the real thing? Has no one ever photographed a Venusian sunset? The splitting of an atom? The birth of a Black Hole? Well, no, we can only photograph what we can see. Obvs…

Over time I came to terms with this, understanding that National Geo artists, like identikit cops, were creating something visible from something that may never be seen with a camera. And so it is with our favourite new companion: the novel coronavirus. We can’t see it because viral particles fall well short of the wavelength of visible light and we can’t see anything that doesn’t reflect light – at least, not directly.

X-rays and gamma rays (I hear you cry) can be used to reproduce what is unseen by translating the physics of an object detected by a beam of radiation into a two-dimensional image, or a three-dimensional ‘tomograph’ as with a Computed Tomography (CaT) scan. And yes, ultrasonic sound waves are used to ‘see’ a foetus in utero… And magnetic fields can peer at our insides using magnetic resonance imaging… And of course, beams of electrons can be used to create images of very tiny things like viral particles as seen in the first seconds of the video above…

But all of these techniques translate something invisible or hidden or very tiny into a kind-of algorithmic artist impression of the thing. Colour, on the other hand, is another matter. We’re not ever going to see coloured ultrasounds or CaT scans or MRIs – or if we do, they’ll be coloured by the engineer’s imagination, not the thing itself. Without visible light, and its subsequent interpretation by our optical system, there can be no colour. Let the philosophers roar…

In the mean time, our little COVID friend needs a face – how else can we recognise him? Fear him? Revile him? And so it is that the artists have run amok and made their own scary germs in garish colours which have pretty-much nothing to do with what a viral particle would actually look like if you shrank down to the size of a cell and joined Raquel Welch and her colleagues as they head down the carotid artery to save a dying scientist in the 60’s classic, Fantastic Voyage…