Soap Bubble Structures by Kym Cox. Bubbles optimise space and minimise their surface area for a given volume of air. This phenomenon makes them a useful tool in many areas of research, in particular, materials science and “packing” – how things fit together. Bubble walls drain under gravity, thin at the top, thick at the bottom, which interferes with travelling lightwaves to create bands of colour. Black spots show the wall is too thin for interference colours, indicating the bubble is about to burst. (Photo by Kym Cox/2019 Science Photographer of the Year/RPS)

A worker fills a public bus with diesel as the bus driver and passengers look on, at a fuel station in Kolkata, India, February 1, 2017. (Photo by Rupak De Chowdhuri/Reuters)

Children hold signs thanking truck drivers hauling rocks to the Lake Oroville Dam after an evacuation was ordered for communities downstream from the dam in Oroville, California, U.S. February 13, 2017. (Photo by Jim Urquhart/Reuters)

The driver of a Maerlitram (fairy tram), dressed as a Santa Claus, walks past a car which crashed into the tram in Zurich, Switzerland December 7, 2017. (Photo by Angelika Gruber/Reuters)

Drivers take part in a demolition derby organised by the Malta Motor Sports Association to raise funds for charity in Ta' Qali, outside Valletta, Malta, January 8, 2017. (Photo by Darrin Zammit Lupi/Reuters)

Self-employed pedicab driver Danilo Guerra, 25, uses his mobile phone as he waits for clients in downtown Havana April 12, 2016. (Photo by Alexandre Meneghini/Reuters)

Lioness and hyena posture to one another, in Masai Mara, Kenya, August 2015. A photographer captured one of the oldest rivalries in the animal kingdom as a pair of lions went head to head with a pack of hungry hyenas. (Photo by Ingo Gerlach/Barcroft Images)