Nano skyscrapers and a long-lost ship — March’s best science images

Spiral cells. This is an image of human nasal cells captured by Katie-Marie Case at University College London Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health. The cells are covered in cilia — tiny hairs that trap and clear foreign bodies from the nose. While studying why COVID-19 affects certain age groups more than others, Case noticed that these galaxy-like nasal cell spirals were present only in older patients. The image was shortlisted in a competition by Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children in London, in which researchers submitted images showing “a moment of research”.

Credit: Katie-Marie Case

Stormy sky. This strangely shaped storm passed over Europe in mid-March. It brought a plume of dust from the Sahara Desert that turned the skies orange across the Iberian Peninsula, before it travelled north to Scandinavia, the United Kingdom and Russia. According to the European Union’s Earth-observation programme Copernicus — whose satellite captured this image — the unusual weather system also caused higher-than-average temperatures and rainfall over the Arctic Circle and along the Norwegian fjords, whereas snow was recorded in Turkey.

Nano skyscrapers. Using a 3D printer, researchers have built minuscule tower blocks for bacteria, creating a system that can generate electricity from sunlight and water. The tiny pillars — coloured green in this electron-microscopy image — are just 600 micrometres high and have a branching, densely packed structure that provides surfaces for the bacteria to grow on. They are made of metal oxide nanoparticles, so that they can act as electrodes harvesting waste electrons that the bacteria generate during photosynthesis. “The electrodes have excellent light-handling properties, like a high-rise apartment with lots of windows,” says lead author Jenny Zhang, a bioinorganic chemist at the University of Cambridge, UK. They “allow for a balance between lots of surface area and lots of light — like a glass skyscraper”. The technique proved more efficient than other methods of producing bioenergy from photosynthesis.

Desert rain. Photojournalist Doug Gimesy took this shot from a small aeroplane as it flew above the Anna Creek cattle station in South Australia, where unusually high local rainfall has caused vegetation to flourish around river channels. The plants bring a touch of green to the reddish desert soil, and salt deposits around the main river channel (white) add to the multicoloured landscape.

Rocket roll-out. On 17 March, NASA’s enormous Moon rocket known as the Space Launch System (SLS) rolled out of the Vehicle Assembly Building at the Kennedy Space Center in Merritt Island, Florida, for the first time. The SLS, stacked with the Orion spacecraft, has been transferred to the launch pad to prepare for a practice countdown called a wet dress rehearsal. It is hoped that the 100-metre-tall rocket — the most powerful NASA has ever built — will eventually take astronauts to the surface of the Moon as part of the agency’s Artemis programme.

Shackleton’s ship. The lost vessel of Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton has been found at the bottom of the Weddell Sea, 107 years after it sank. Scientists discovered Endurance’s remarkably well-preserved remains at a depth of 3,008 metres on the 100th anniversary of Shackleton’s funeral. The ship was around 6 kilometres south of the position originally recorded by its captain, Frank Worsley. The scientists spent weeks searching the area using a South African research vessel equipped with remotely operated underwater search vehicles.

Animated exoplanets. The number of known planets beyond the Solar System has passed 5,000. This video from NASA charts their discovery over time — as each exoplanet is discovered, a circle appears at its position in the sky. The size of the circle represents the relative size of the planet’s orbit around its nearby star and the colour shows which method was used to discover it. The solid blue shape that appears on the left hand side shows the Kepler space telescope’s field of view. The music was composed by playing a note for each newly discovered world. Planets that take a long time to orbit their stars have low notes, whereas planets that orbit more quickly have higher notes.