Small beauties

From tragic to touching

Syrian seeds

Among the people forced out of their country by the war in Syria are researchers from the nation’s seed bank, who are now rebuilding their lives in locations around the world. Ali Shehadeh (pictured) is one of them. A researcher who was based at a International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas seed bank in Aleppo, he now works in Terbol, Lebanon. Credit: Diego Ibarra Sanchez/The New York Times/eyevine

Capturing sunlight

The 2017 World Solar Challenge this month saw strange vehicles racing 3,000 kilometres across Australia, powered only by sunlight. Here, the Dutch-built vehicle RED Shift passes a rock formation known as the Devil’s Marbles, near Tennant Creek in the Northern Territory. Credit: Xu Haijing/Xinhua/ZUMA Wire

Sponge spikes

Marine sponges called demospongiae make their skeletons out of silica-glass structures called spicules. Using this image and others, researchers have been unpicking what they call the “half-a-billion-year-old fabrication concept” that produces these structures. Credit: Zlotnikov Group, B CUBE, TU Dresden

Spinal surgery

Physicians at Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston now operate on fetuses with spina bifida while they are still in the womb using a new, experimental technique. This technique involves lifting the mother’s uterus out of her body to operate on the spine of the baby inside it. Credit: Beatrice de Gea/The New York Times/Redux/eyevine

A cosmic collision’s aftermath

Two galaxies smashed together into one to form this cluster of stars, with tails some 15,000 parsecs (50,000 light years) long. NASA released the image this month, and cheerfully pointed out that this is what our Milky Way will look like in 4 billion years’ time, after it collides with neighbouring galaxy Andromeda. Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA

Sun block

Credit: E. C. Márquez/Nikon Small World 2017