Anatomy Of A Sneeze

Simultaneously expressing itself as a solid, liquid and gas, the common sneeze is one of nature’s grossest miracles.

- Brandon Specktor

MIT researcher Lydia Bourouiba has a different name for sneezes, though: violent expiratory events. That’s also the title of a recent study in which her team analyzed sneezes, millisecond by millisecond, with a high-speed camera and sophisticated computer models. What did they find? There’s more to a sneeze than what you see in your hanky—and that could influence our understanding of the way diseases spread. Here’s a closer look at what scientists see when you say