An example of simile (and anthropomorphism) in public science discourse:
"if you see X-rays coming from a star, it's like a flag that the star is waving at you saying, 'look at me, look at me, I'm interesting'."
Prof. Paul Murdin
Prof. Paul Murdin (Institute of Astronomy, University of Cambridge) was being interviewed on an episode ('Paul Murdin on the first ever identification of a black hole') of The Life Scientific.
Read about examples of science similes
Read examples of anthropomorphism in science