A view shows a damaged road after floods caused by torrential rain, in Kumamura, Kumamoto Prefecture, southwestern Japan, July 8, 2020. (Photo by Kim Kyung-Hoon/Reuters)
A woman attends the annual Easter Parade and Bonnet Festival on Fifth Avenue, amid the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, in New York City, U.S., April 4, 2021. (Photo by Eduardo Munoz/Reuters)
A squirrel fights for its life in the bill of a great blue heron at the Mission Trails Regional Park in California in the second decade of April 2025. (Phoot by Decker Nomura/Solent News & Photo Agency)
Raquel Poti performs on stilts during the Amigos da Onca street Carnival party, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Saturday, February 10, 2024. (Photo by Bruna Prado/AP Photo)
A model is reflected in the mirror applying makeup during the Mr. and Mrs. Kibera leadership contest, on International Youth Day, in Nairobi, Kenya, Tuesday, August 12, 2025. (Photo by Brian Inganga/AP Photo)
Microscope images forge an extraordinary bond between science and art, said Hidenao Tsuchiya, Olympus America's Vice President and General Manager for the Scientific Equipment Group. We founded this competition to focus on the fascinating stories coming out of today's life science research laboratories. The thousands of images that people have shared with the competition over the years reflect some of the most exciting work going on in research today – work that can help shed light on the living universe and ultimately save lives. We look at BioScapes and these beautiful images as sources of education and inspiration to us and the world
What makes a watch the most valuable in the world? It’s supercomplicated – literally. In 1925 banker Henry Graves Jr. (considered the greatest watch collector of the 20th century) commissioned Patek Philippe to create a unique gold pocket watch. When Graves finally received it – eight years later – it was the most complex timepiece ever created by human hands... (Photo by Suzanne Plunkett/Reuters)
A coil-shaped Helix Nebula showing a fine web of filamentary “bicycle-spoke” features embedded in the colorful red and blue ring of gas. At 650 light-years away, the Helix is one of the nearest planetary nebulae to Earth. A planetary nebula is the glowing gas around a dying, Sun-like star. (Photo by Reuters/NASA)