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)

Winner. “I took this vertical image in the Quarry Bay district of Hong Kong during the dusk ‘blue hour’, when there was a perfect balance between the ambient light in the sky and the artificial lights of the high-rise residential buildings”. (Photo by Jatinder Heer/The Guardian)

Cropped shot of a woman flirtatiously touching leg of man in a suit with her foot under the table. (Photo by LightField Studios/Skyfish Digital Media/Getty Images)

Parade goers during Brighton Pride Parade on August 03, 2019 in Brighton, England. Tens of thousands of revellers dressed in rainbow colours and elaborate costumes and descended on the seaside city to ask for equality for all. (Photo by Tristan Fewings/Getty Images)

Indigenous Q'eqchi girls practice taekwondo with their teacher, Danny Coy, on a dirt court in the middle of the village in Tipulcan village, San Pedro Carcha, Guatemala, on 25 November 2019 (issued 27 November 2019). Tipulcan village girls learn taekwondo to combat sexist violence and harassment they have suffered in their community in northern Guatemala. (Photo by Esteban Biba/EPA/EFE)

In this photo taken October 12, 2019, a spiritual healer known as a “madrina” starts a ritual on Sorte Mountain where followers of indigenous goddess Maria Lionza gather annually in Venezuela's Yaracuy state. While her followers gather on the mountain for weeks at this time of the year, October 12 marks the biggest gathering, coinciding with Indigenous People's Day, known in Latin America as “Dia de la Raza”. (Photo by Ariana Cubillos/AP Photo)

A palm squirrel and ring-rosed parakeet compete for space on a stump in a residential area of Chandigarh, India in the last decade of August 2024. (Photo by Anuj Jain/Solent News)

Camera trapper Xavier Hubert-Brierre put this large mirror on the side of a road through the jungle in Gabon and left a camera there to record how the animals would respond to their own reflections. A silverback gorilla thought it was seeing another silverback and responded by trying to scare off the potential challenger… (Photo by Xavier Hubert-Brierre/Johns Hopkins University Press)