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)

Somalis remove the body of a man killed in a blast in the capital Mogadishu, Somalia Saturday, October 14, 2017. A huge explosion from a truck bomb has killed at least 20 people in Somalia's capital, police said Saturday, as shaken residents called it the most powerful blast they'd heard in years. (Photo by Farah Abdi Warsameh/AP Photo)

This photo provided by the North Korean government shows North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, center, is surrounded by performers during a celebration marking the nation's 74th anniversary in Pyongyang, North Korea, on September 8, 2022. (Photo by Korean Central News Agency/Korea News Service via AP Photo)

People attend the New Year's eve gala of youth and students at Kim Il Sung Square in Pyongyang, North Korea Sunday, December 31, 2023. (Photo by Jon Chol Jin/AP Photo)

India's Border Security Force (BSF) “Daredevils” motorcycle riders perform during a rehearsal for the Republic Day parade on a foggy winter morning in New Delhi January 8, 2015. India will celebrate its annual Republic Day on January 26. (Photo by Ahmad Masood/Reuters)

In this November 19, 2015 photo, Ester Melendez feeds banana porridge to her nine-month-old daughter Dina, in Pichiquia, an Ashaninka indigenous community in Peru's Junin region. Incursions and assaults by loggers, miners, colonists and leftist guerrillas have reduced the lands of the Ashaninka people in the Peruvian Amazon, leaving many of the 97,000 members of the group malnourished, despite efforts by the government and independent organizations to help. (Photo by Rodrigo Abd/AP Photo)

An undercover police officer, who had been marching with anti-police demonstrators, aims his gun at protesters after some in the crowd attacked him and his partner in Oakland, California December 10, 2014. Police said more than 100 demonstrators marched in Berkeley, California, which has a history of social activism. Under cloudy skies, turnout was smaller than earlier in the week, when demonstrators in the area threw rocks at police and shut down a major freeway. (Photo by Noah Berger/Reuters)

This Thursday, January 22, 2015 photo made with a long exposure shows the glow from a Noctiluca scintillans algal bloom along the seashore in Hong Kong. The luminescence, also called Sea Sparkle, is triggered by farm pollution that can be devastating to marine life and local fisheries, according to University of Georgia oceanographer Samantha Joye. Noctiluca itself does not produce neurotoxins like other similar organisms do. But its role as both prey and predator tends can eventually magnify the accumulation of toxins in the food chain, according to R. Eugene Turner at Louisiana State University. (Photo by Kin Cheung/AP Photo)