Afghan security stands guard as a tractor eradicates a field of young poppy plants May 25, 2011, in Argu District, Badakshan, Afghanistan. (Photo by Paula Bronstein/Getty Images)

A young girl navigates her way around Hampton Court maze in the spring sunshine on May 2, 2009 in London, England. The Hampton Court maze is one of the most famous hedge mazes in the world and was planted between 1689 and 1695 by George London and Henry Wise. (Photo by Dan Kitwood/Getty Images)

Beautiful, strange and occasionally alarming pictures from the shortlist for this year’s Wellcome image awards – which celebrate the very best in science photography and imaging – from an x-ray of a bat to a micrograph of a kidney stone. The exhibition opens on 12 March at three science centres and the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester. Photo: Scanning electron micrograph (SEM) of an Arabidopsis thaliana flower, also commonly known as thale cress. Some of the anthers are open, revealing pollen grains ready for dispersal. Arabidopsis was the first plant to have its entire genome sequenced and is widely used as a model organism in molecular and plant biology. Horizontal width of image is 1200 microns. Magnification 100x. (Photo by Stefan Eberhard/Wellcome Images)

A worker at the Jabal Saraj cement factory poses for a photograph in Jabal Saraj, north of Kabul, Afghanistan April 19, 2016. In an area desperately short of industry and jobs, local workers hope that the relaunch of the plant in Jabal Saraj, built by Czech engineers in 1957 and closed down by the Taliban in 1995, can show that Afghanistan's shattered industry can climb back to its feet after decades of war and destruction. But the outdated state-owned plant some 75 kilometres outside Kabul also shows how far it has to go before that promise can be achieved and there are serious questions over whether it has a viable future unless a new, modern facility is built to replace it. (Photo by Ahmad Masood/Reuters)

U.S. President Donald Trump gestures during his visit to a section of the U.S.-Mexico border wall in Otay Mesa, California, U.S. September 18, 2019. Trump threatened to do “dastardly things” to Iran in response to the drone attacks on the world’s largest oil plant in Saudi Arabia. The US President indicated he is wary of involving America in another war in the Middle East – but he did not rule out a military attack. (Photo by Tom Brenner/Reuters)

Natalia Arango works with her mine detector in a zone of landmines planted by rebels groups near Sonson in Antioquia province, November 19, 2015. Women's work takes on a nontraditional meaning for fifteen Colombian women who work to rid the Antioquia Mountains of deadly landmines as the country edges closer to a peace agreement with Marxist rebels to end over a decade of conflict which has claimed 220,000 lives. (Photo by Fredy Builes/Reuters)

A stray puppy walks along abandoned train tracks near the Chernobyl nuclear power plant on August 19, 2017 near Chornobyl, Ukraine. An estimated 900 stray dogs live in the exclusion zone, many of them likely the descendants of dogs left behind following the mass evacuation of residents in the aftermath of the 1986 nuclear disaster at Chernobyl. (Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images)

A fuzzy caterpillar on a basil plant in west Bengal, India on December 25, 2023. The caterpillar’s defence system is its hair, which has microscopic barbs that break off easily in the skin of would-be predators. (Photo by Soumyabrata Roy/NurPhoto/Rex Features/Shutterstock)