2 HN users recommended this explainer2 months2021–2022score 2
Years with an HN recommendation, 2007–2026
Recommended as a beautiful, accessible animation of cellular energy production.
A short Harvard animation narrated by Professor Rob Lue introducing mitochondria as the cell's powerhouses and how cells turn food and oxygen into energy.
“a beautiful animation of "Mitochondria: the cell's powerhouse” (HN, 2021)
You want molecular dynamics. They are simulations, not real images. But otoh (visible) light rays are "about as big" as a very large protein, so you can't image them. And because of computational expense they're slow motion by necessity, which is good because very, very complex enzyme interactions means ~2-3000 interactions per second. Example: [this video]
Example of molecular dynamics simulation of enzyme interactions.
Video list and Hacker News comment labels from HackerTube (prompted by @karpathy), released under ODC-By 1.0, built on the open-index/hacker-news archive. Hacker News data is provided by Y Combinator; comments remain the work of their authors. Video titles, channel names and thumbnails belong to their creators and are shown via YouTube. HackerTube Watch is an unofficial edition. Data export of 2026-10-31.
3 Hacker News comments
From the HN archive; up to 20 kept per video, favoring different commenters. Recommendations first.
Citations, criticism and jokes