Black holes, buckyballs and boxing hares — April’s best science images

Microscopic scales. This confocal-microscope image shows the scaly skin of an African house snake (Lamprophis spp.) embryo in exquisite detail. The bright dots along the edge of each scale show dermal pigment cells, and the silvery criss-crossing strands are collagen fibres. Grigorii Timin, a PhD student at the University of Geneva, Switzerland, captured the shot, which was a regional winner at the Olympus Image of the Year Award 2020.

People cremate the bodies of victims of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), at a crematorium ground in New Delhi, India, April 24, 2021.

Credit: Danish Siddiqui/Reuters

Devastating losses. At a crematorium ground in New Delhi, funeral pyres cremate the bodies of those who have died from COVID-19. The pandemic is sweeping through India at a pace that has staggered scientists. Since late April, the government has reported more than 300,000 new cases each day. The unprecedented surge could be due to several factors, including the emergence of particularly infectious coronavirus variants, a rise in unrestricted social interactions and low vaccine coverage.

Credit: Alexander Ziegler

Emperor dumbo. Meet the emperor dumbo octopus Grimpoteuthis imperator, a rare species of deep-sea cephalopod described using non-destructive imaging techniques and DNA analysis. The specimen in these images was accidentally caught by geologists collecting rock samples from the depths of North Pacific Ocean.

Credit: Alexander Ziegler

When the research ship’s on-board biologist, Alexander Ziegler, saw the creature, he recognized it as a dumbo octopus — named because their large fins resemble an elephant’s ears — but suspected it was a species unknown to science. Further investigation confirmed this: magnetic resonance imaging and computerized-tomography scans allowed Ziegler to examine the octopus’s internal structure in detail while leaving its body intact — an approach he says could prove useful for characterizing rare specimens in future.

Imagery of Grimpoteuthis imperator sp. nov. Caption: Seeing Inside the Newly Discovered Emperor Dumbo Octopus. The discovery of the emperor Dumbo octopus stemmed from the use of nondestructive MRI and CT scans—techniques that could revolutionize taxonomy. from the rsearcher: I am particularly grateful that this specimen, literally a bycatch on a geo cruise, did not pass away in complete vain, but we "used" it to advance our knowledge of these rare organisms. Who knows, your coverage as well as that from the past week might further help to raise awareness for how complex the deep sea actually is. If it helps to protect this fragile environment, then one dead dumbo might have potentially helped save more of his kind.

Credit: Alexander Ziegler

Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Jeremy Schnittman and Brian P. Powell. (This video has no sound)

Binary black holes. This simulation shows how two supermassive black holes distort and redirect light emanating from their accretion disks — the maelstrom of hot gas that surrounds each one. To create the visualization, astrophysicist Jeremy Schnittman, at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, used a supercomputer to calculate the path taken by light rays from the accretion disks as they made their way through the warped space-time around the black holes.

Dramatic new images by Erlend Haarberg reveal the hidden night life of mountain hares in Norway. As spring awakens in the upland birch forest of Vauldalen, tensions between mountain hares begins to grow. April and May is their mating season, when a surge of testosterone pushes the males into an amorous mood. In their pursuit of females, they engage in nightly brawls. Upright on their hind legs, limbs clash and fur flies. The first one to land a direct hit against the head or body of his rival is usually the winner.

Credit: Erlend Haarberg/NPL

Furry fighters. For 25 years, wildlife photographer Erlend Haarberg has been capturing the hidden night life of mountain hares (Lepus timidus) in the forests of central Norway. During the mating season in April and May, rival males engage in boxing matches under the cover of darkness to fight for food or females. Haarberg says the first to land a direct hit on the head or body of his opponent is usually the winner.

Abdominal area of the mummy 236805/3 with amulets representing the Four Sons of Horus above the navel area. Concentration of the textiles above the navel is visible in the lower central part of the image (not in this same scale, dimensions of the amulets c. 4 cm, Marcin Jaworski).

Credit: W. Ejsmond et al./J. Archaeol. Sci.

Mummy and baby. Scans of an ancient Egyptian mummy, part of the collections at the National Museum in Warsaw since 1917, have revealed that it is the body of a pregnant woman — the first known example of an embalmed pregnant body. The identity of the woman and the cause of death remain a mystery. She was aged between 20 and 30 when she died around the first century BC, and researchers say that the way her body is carefully wrapped and adorned with mummy-shaped amulets (seen in right panel of the picture) suggest she had a high social status.

3rd Place, Professional, Wildlife & Nature, 2021 Sony World Photography Awards ‘I have imagined the ocean as a superorganism, with the world's seas as its organs, and its creatures as the tissues that interconnect everything. Sinking further down on to it, there is nothing… but sea drops.’ This figurative concept opens Sea Drops, a photo essay aimed to explore the effervescence of life inside drops of sea water. By using lab micropipettes, and a self-designed micro studio setup, the project captures the beauty and manners of live plankton, which are in the range of 200 to 1,500 microns, inside specially lit drops of water. It tells the story of one of Earth's most pivotal biological communities with an innovative perspective, falling somewhere between art and science. The images reveal the astonishing diversity of creatures otherwise invisible to the naked eye, as well as their amazing behaviour, some of which is likely never to have been documented before. It may even be new to science. From the enthralling beauty of sea sapphires, to the mesmerisingly mysterious dances of annelid worms, the project opens a drop-shaped window to a new world. All specimens were carefully handled under a biologist's expertise, and released alive and unharmed back into the sea.

Credit: Angel Fitor/Sony World Photography Awards

Plankton portrait. Photographer Angel Fitor says his project Sea Drops falls “somewhere between art and science”. Fitor used micropipettes to carefully place individual specimens of live plankton — tiny creatures measuring 200 to 1,500 micrometres across — inside specially lit drops of water to be photographed. The shots won third place in the Wildlife & Nature category of the 2021 Sony World Photography Awards. Following the photo shoot, the oblivious, unharmed plankton models were released back into the sea.

Credit: Richard Layfield

Credit: Richard Layfield

Old but not forgotten. Chemist Richard Layfield was shocked when a retiring colleague at the University of Sussex, UK, passed him the original samples of fullerenes — C₆₀ and C₇₀ — purified in the 1980s by the late chemist Harry Kroto. Kroto was at Sussex when he shared the 1996 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the discovery of these cage-like carbon molecules, known as buckyballs. Layfield was also gifted the original instrument that analysed them, which still works.