As common sense suggests, language is an important part of how minds represent hypotheses, but other sensory modalities can also contribute. You can represent your conjecture that O. J. Simpson killed his ex-wife by the sentence “O. J. killed Nicole.” But if you have seen pictures of Simpson, you can also represent this hypothesis by the dynamic mental image of him slashing Nicole with a knife, a kind of moving picture in your head. Similarly, scientists can represent the simplified structure of the atom with the words “The electron revolves around the proton,” but they can also use diagrams or mental pictures to represent this hypothesis visually. Other sensory images can also help constitute hypotheses—for example, if you imagine the sound of Nicole screaming.