A worker carries a bag of salt after collecting it from a pond at the Maras mines in Cuzco December 3, 2014. Salt has been obtained in Maras since pre-Incan times by evaporating highly salty local subterranean stream water. The water is intricately channelled through constructions, flowing gradually down onto several hundred ancient terraced ponds. From each pond, a local member of the mine cooperative can produce 150 to 200 kilos per month which can be sold in the markets at $0.34 per kilogram, according to miners. (Photo by Enrique Castro-Mendivil/Reuters)

A model poses with “The Wellbeing Toilet” the winning entry from a Dyno-Rod Initiative to create a new design for the domestic toilet at Central Saint Martins on November 18, 2013 in London, England. The concept was commissioned to mark 50 years of Dyno-Rod and World Toilet Day on November 19th, 2013 The “Wellbeing Toilet” looks at the health and wellbeing aspect of getting rid of your bodily waste by being sculpted to enhance the position of your body by enabling you to squat rather than sit. (Photo by Miles Willis/Getty Images for Dyno-Rod)

English-Albanian singer Dua Lipa performs her “Radical Optimism Tour” at Rod Laver Arena on March 23, 2025 in Melbourne, Australia. (Photo by Naomi Rahim/Getty Images)

World medieval jousting champion Rod Walker poses before next month’s St Ives Medieval Faire, the only solid wood lance joust tournament in the southern hemisphere in Sydney, Australia on August 26, 2016. (Photo by Dan Himbrechts/AAP)

Simon Monk’s 'Secret Identity' is an ongoing series of paintings, each representing a plastic figurine of a famous superhero contained in a clear plastic bag. Bagged and hung on a hook these superheroes become recently purchased objects robbed of the enormous power they wield.

Most people know Nikon as a purveyor of pro and consumer-grade digital cameras. But the company's expertise with optics bleeds over into related markets – it's one of the science community's major suppliers of microscopes. And each year the company asks the community to send it some of their favorite images of tiny objects. A panel of scientists and journalists have chosen the best of this past year's submissions, which Nikon has placed on its Small World site.

Photo: Honorable Mention. “Snow crystal, illuminated with colored lights (5x)”. (Photo by Dr. Kenneth Libbrecht, California Institute of Technology (Caltech), Department of Physics, Pasadena, California, USA)

A fuel rod is inserted into a reactor vessel inside the No. 1 reactor building at Kyushu Electric Power's Sendai nuclear power station in Satsumasendai, Kagoshima prefecture, Japan, July 8, 2015. Kyushu Electric Power Co started loading uranium fuel rods into a reactor on Tuesday, marking the first attempt to reboot Japan's nuclear industry in nearly two years after the sector was shutdown following the 2011 Fukushima disaster. (Photo by Issei Kato/Reuters)

Hindu devotees, their cheeks pierced with metal rods, wait to participate in a religious procession during Thaipusam festival in Chennai, India, Tuesday, February 3, 2015. Thaipusam, celebrated in honor of Hindu god Lord Murugan, is an annual procession by Hindu devotees seeking blessings, fulfilling vows and offering thanks. (Photo by Arun Sankar K./AP Photo)