Praia du Forte, Bahia. “This was the lead picture for a National Geographic story on Bahia, because it was both mysterious as well as a “geography” picture showing where the slaves arrived from Nigeria. Beach pictures seem like they should be easy to take, but for me they are actually quite difficult. Too easy to fall into cliche. When I saw the kid coming on the horse, I quickly ran to see if I could make something with a woman in a bikini that was not a bikini shot”. (Photo by David Alan Harvey/The Guardian)

“The Sloan Digital Sky Survey III (SDSS-III) has released the largest-ever three-dimensional map of massive galaxies and distant black holes, which will help astronomers explain the mysterious “dark matter” and “dark energy” that scientists know makes up 96 percent of the Universe”. – SDSS-III

People will spout about impermanence of digital records, but books are really fragile, too. Alexis Arnold from San Francisco wanted to illustrate that with her project The Crystallized Book: collecting books and growing Borax crystals on them. Books range from literature classics to magazines, and there’s even a mysterious and arcane tome called “Linux: The Complete Manual”.

Underwater photographer of the year 2020 and wide angle category winner: Frozen Mobile Home by Greg Lecoeur (France) in the Antarctic peninsula, Antarctica. Crabeater seals swim around an iceberg. These massive and mysterious habitats are dynamic kingdoms that support marine life. As they swing and rotate slowly through polar currents, icebergs fertilise the oceans by carrying nutrients from land that spark blooms of phytoplankton, fundamental to the carbon cycle. (Photo by Greg Lecoeur/Underwater Photographer of the Year 2020)

Indigenous woven backpacks called guayare are seen in front of a house in Paraitepui village, before a walking excursion to Mount Roraima, near Venezuela's border with Brazil January 13, 2015. A mysterious table-topped mountain on the Venezuela-Brazil border that perplexed 19th century explorers and inspired “The Lost World” novel is attracting ever more modern-day adventurers. (Photo by Carlos Garcia Rawlins/Reuters)