A worker carries a carp freshwater fish at a breeding site in Iraq's central city of Najaf, on June 13, 2021. (Photo by Ali Najafi/AFP Photo)

A dead fish lies on the bank of Oder River on the German-Polish border, in Brieskow-Finkenheerd, Frankfurt (Oder), Germany, August 11, 2022. Authorities are looking into the cause of the mysterious fish deaths. (Photo by Annegret Hilse/Reuters)

Members of the Beltane Fire Society take part in Samhuinn Fire Festival on October 31, 2023 in Edinburgh, Scotland. Once celebrated from October 31 to November 1 by ancient Celts, Samhain, pronounced “SOW-in” or “SAH-win”, marked the shift from the brighter to the darker half of the year and was seen as a time when the boundary between the physical and spirit worlds was thought to weaken, influencing the development of contemporary Halloween customs. (Photo by Murdo MacLeod/The Guardian)

People run away as a building is toppled during a controlled demolition as part of an urban transformation in Ankara, Turkey, February 3, 2014. (Photo by Serap Doganyigit/Reuters)

Two men standing on a high catwalk, surveying the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge, with Manhattan in the background, New York City, 1877. (Photo by Museum of the City of New York/Archive Photos/Getty Images)

A girl carries on her head a pile of dried shrubs she gathered for cooking and heating, in Kabul, Afghanistan November 18, 2015. (Photo by Omar Sobhani/Reuters)

The Doppler on Wheels (DOW) vehicle scans a supercell thunderstorm during a tornado research mission, May 8, 2017 in Elbert County near Agate, Colorado. Doppler on Wheels (DOW) is a mobile doppler radar mounted on a truck that brings instruments directly into storms, allowing scientists to scan storms and tornadoes and make 3-D maps of wind and debris. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

Beautiful, strange and occasionally alarming pictures from the shortlist for this year’s Wellcome image awards – which celebrate the very best in science photography and imaging – from an x-ray of a bat to a micrograph of a kidney stone. The exhibition opens on 12 March at three science centres and the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester. Photo: Scanning electron micrograph (SEM) of an Arabidopsis thaliana flower, also commonly known as thale cress. Some of the anthers are open, revealing pollen grains ready for dispersal. Arabidopsis was the first plant to have its entire genome sequenced and is widely used as a model organism in molecular and plant biology. Horizontal width of image is 1200 microns. Magnification 100x. (Photo by Stefan Eberhard/Wellcome Images)