Revellers are sprayed by a water cannon during a street party called “Bloco Das Barbas” in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil on February 18, 2023. Hundreds of street parties traditionally take place every year in the city before and during Rio de Janeiro's carnival. (Photo by Carl de Souza/AFP Photo)

Young people play with foam during a march to commemorate Youth Day in Caracas, Venezuela, 12 February 2025. The president of Venezuela's National Assembly (AN, Parliament), Chavista Jorge Rodriguez, invited, before hundreds of followers who commemorated Youth Day, all young migrants to return to the country so that they can “build a prosperous homeland”. (Photo by Ronald Pena R./EPA)

(L-R) Jade Chapman, Maryam Maquillage, Mariah Carey, Laura Lee and Arika Sato attend M.A.C Cosmetics Mariah Carey Beauty Icon Launch at Baccarat Hotel on December 3, 2016 in New York City. (Photo by Theo Wargo/Getty Images for M.A.C)

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)

Sustainable development goal target 12.5 is to reduce waste. But with a planet increasingly dependent on technology, is that even possible? As of today, over 30m tonnes of electronic waste has been thrown out so far this year, according to the World Counts. Most e-waste is sent to landfills in Asia and Africa where it is recycled by hand, exposing the people who do it to environmental hazards. Kai Loeffelbein’s photographs of e-waste recycling in Guiyu, southern China show what happens to discarded computers. (Photo by Kai Loeffelbein/laif Agentur)

A Boeing F/A-18 takes off to perform during the Farnborough International Airshow in Farnborough, Britain, 12 July 2016. The Farnborough International Air Show runs from 11-17 July. (Photo by Hannah Mckay/EPA)

As part of FLAIR Melbourne – a Flinders Lane art festival – Melbourne’s Lisa Minogue presents stylised photographic portraits of Australian women of colour, their faces painted vibrantly to accentuate their individuality and encourage the viewer to study each face more closely. Minogue asked each woman the same question: “What do the words “coloured girl” mean to you?”. (Photo by Lisa Minogue/The Guardian)

A colony of penguins gather with the Bark Europa in the background, on March 05, 2015 in South Georgia Island. An adventurer has documented his 5,000 miles journey aboard a 100-year-old ship, sailing from Argentina to Antarctica to Cape Town. (Photo by Andrew Orr/Barcroft Images)