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)

The battleship USS Iowa fires its 16-inch guns during duty in the Persian Gulf on December 16, 1987. In 1943, the Iowa ferried President Franklin Roosevelt home from the Teheran Conference, where post-WW II leaders divided up the world. The ship fought battles from the South Pacific to Korea and escorted convoys through the Persian Gulf. Forty-seven sailors died atop its deck when an explosion ripped through a gun turret. Now, the new port for the retired USS Iowa just might be the home of California's annual asparagus festival, the gritty agriculture port town of Stockton on the San Joaquin River, about 80 miles inland from San Francisco. (Photo by Eric Risberg/AP Photo)

Mateo Santiago, Field Manager at Tropical Bamboo Nursery and Gardens, photographs rain water collecting in the corpse flower as Garden Manager Melanie Benson steadies a ladder. Santiago crinkled his nose up distastefully when he described its odor, which was at its worse Sunday night. “It smelled like a dead rat”. (Photo by Melanie Bell/Palm Beach Daily News)

Zoee Heath of New South Wales competes in the womens U18 discus throw during day two of the Australian Junior Athletics Championships at Sydney Olympic Park Athletic Centre on March 11, 2011 in Sydney, Australia.

A man poses standing on a rock looking at the aurora borealis, or northern lights, illuminating the night sky at Embleton Bay in Northumberland, England, on February 27, 2014. The northern lights is a fantastical natural light display with fast moving light effects caused by particles charged by the sun colliding with particles in Earth's upper atmosphere. (Photo by Tom White/PA Wire)

Several beaches along South Florida's Atlantic coast line were closed after thousands of sharks were seen migrating in the waters. The sharks were migrating from Boca Raton to Jupiter since the beginning of March, marine biologists told NBC Miami. Photo: A spinner shark swims just offshore on Midtown Beach in Palm Beach on Tuesday. (Photo by Jeffrey Langlois/Palm Beach Daily News)

Fireplace for children, Trondheim, Norway, by Haugen/Zohar. The children of Trondheim come to sit around the fire and tell stories in this whimsical cone hut, made with materials recycled from a construction site. (Photo by Jason Havneraas/The Guardian)

A grizzly bear fishes for salmon under the Northern Lights in Klukshu, Yukon, in the north of Canada on March 3, 2025. The bear makes use of the darkness because the salmon can't see well enough to swim away. (Photo by Peter Mather/Solent News & Photo Agency)