Upside-down houses, CES and mask recycling: The best images in science for January

By James Cutmore

Published: Monday, 31 January 2022 at 12:00 am

2022 is now well underway, with the last of the Christmas leftovers but a distant memory.

The Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas returned this year, after being an all-virtual event in 2021. CES is traditionally one of the biggest events on the technology calendar, and although attendance was down this year on 2020, there were still many highlights.

Meanwhile, as the James Webb Space Telescope was successfully unfolded and moved into position, the anticipation of what spectacular images we might see later on this year starts to build. You will see them all on Sciencefocus.com as soon as they drop.

Pink drink

"Aerial
Aerial view of rosy salt lake on 2 January 2022 in Yuncheng, Shanxi Province of China. Photo by Liu Bao Cheng/VCG/Getty Images

Biting the hand that provides batteries

"An
An attendee places a finger inside the mouth of Yukai Engineering’s Amagami Ham Ham cat robot, during the Consumer Electronics Show on 3 January 2022 in Las Vegas, Nevada, USA. The Consumer Electronics Show, one of the world’s largest trade fairs, returned to Las Vegas under a newly resurgent pandemic. Photo by Patrick T Fallon/AFP/Getty Images

Startling starlings

"murmuration
A murmuration of starlings fly in the sky at sunset in Rome on 3 January 2022. Photo by Tiziana Fabi/AFP/Getty Images

Stop right now

"car
A vehicle with Luminar LIDAR based Proactive Safety pre-collision braking crash avoidance technology stops to avoid a child-sized test dummy as it is demonstrated on a test track at the Las Vegas Convention Center ahead of the Consumer Electronics Show on 4 January 2022 in Las Vegas, USA. Photo by Patrick T Fallon/AFP/Getty Images

Wish you were here?

"Mars
The China National Space Administration published a stunning Martian selfie captured by the Tianwen-1 Mars orbiter above the Red Planet on 4 January 2022 after releasing a small camera and beaming photos via WiFi to mission control. The photographs show the orbiter flying around the Red Planet in an orbit, the ice cover on Mars’s north pole, and a scene of a barren Martian plain. Photo by CNSA/UPI/Shutterstock

Training day

"ER
The tmsuk Pedia-Roid ER training robot for healthcare worker training on paediatric patients is demonstrated during the Consumer Electronics Show on 5 January 2022 in Las Vegas, USA. Photo by Patrick T Fallon/AFP/Getty Images

Race for autonomy

"Autonomous
The TUM Autonomous Motorsport race car from the Technische Universität München drives during the Indy Autonomous Challenge. The challenge took place during the Consumer Electronics Show at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway on 7 January 2022 in Las Vegas, Nevada, USA. Members of Italian-American team PoliMOVE cheered as their car, nicknamed ‘Minerva’, repeatedly passed a rival entered by South Korean team Kaist. Photo by Patrick T Fallon/AFP/Getty Images

Webb unfurled

"command
Engineering teams at NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope Mission Operations Center at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore monitor progress as the observatory’s second primary mirror wing rotates into position, on 8 January 2022 in Baltimore, USA. The infrared telescope with a 6.5-metre primary mirror was folded up for launch and underwent an unprecedented deployment process to unfold in space. As NASA’s next flagship observatory, JWST will study every phase of cosmic history from within our Solar System to the most distant observable galaxies in the early Universe. Photo by Bill Ingalls/NASA

Mr Fog

"Buildings
This aerial view shows Kuwait City’s al-Hamra tower (right), the headquarters of The National Bank of Kuwait (centre) and the al-Rayah tower (left), caught in heavy fog early on 13 January 2022. Photo by Yasser Al-Zayyat/AFP/Getty Images

Northern Lights

"aurora
An aurora borealis, also known as Northern Lights, illuminates the night sky above the Kellostapuli Fell in Kolari, Finnish Lapland, early on 15 January 2022. Photo by Irene Stachon/Lehtikuva/AFP/Getty Images

Loose cannon

"Pollution
A ‘cannon’ that uses soundwaves to push toxic particles higher into the atmosphere to allow residents to breathe cleaner air is pictured in Kalwaria Zebrzydowska, Poland, on 19 January 2022. In a battle against Poland’s constant smog, scientists are testing out the experimental device that uses soundwaves to push toxic particles higher into the atmosphere in order to to chase the smog from Kalwaria Zebrzydowska, which like many Polish towns and cities faces the problem every winter when residents fire up highly polluting heating systems. Photo by Bartosz Siedlik/AFP/Getty Images

On the move

"ISS
An instrument dubbed the ‘space storm hunter’ hangs out in its new location outside the International Space Station in this image taken by on of the station’s external cameras on 21 January 2022. The Atmosphere-Space Interactions Monitor, or ASIM for short, measures electric events in Earth’s upper atmosphere with cameras, photometers, X-rays and gamma-ray detectors. Photo by ESA

Colombian bushfires

"A
A man fights a bushfire in Guatavita, near Bogotá, Colombia, on 22 January 2022. The bushfire has destroyed dozen of hectares of native vegetation and is out of control according to local authorities. Photo by Daniel Munoz/AFP/Getty Images

What goes boom

"X-59
This colourised schlieren image, released on the January 2022, shows a small-scale model of NASA’s X-59 Quiet SuperSonic Technology (QueSST) airplane inside NASA Glenn Research Center’s Supersonic Wind Tunnel during a recent boom test. The multiple-week campaign produced data sets and shockwave visuals that engineers from the agency’s Commercial Supersonic Technology project will use to validate boom-reducing technologies and sonic boom-predicting capabilities. Photo by NASA

More images from Science Focus:

The man in the recycled mask

"A
A staff member seen sorting wireless phone chargers at Miniwiz Lab in New Taipei City, Taiwan on 27 January 2022. Miniwiz has developed a process that turns used face masks into cases for wireless phone chargers. Photo by Walid Berrazeg/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

Squid game

"An
An AI interactive squid by Holo Toyz is seen on a mobile phone at the Toy Fair 2022 on 27 January 2022 in London, United Kingdom. The 2022 London Toy Fair is the only international toy trade event this year with others being cancelled due to the coronavirus pandemic. Photo by Leon Neal/Getty Images

Quit hogging the stone

"Robot
A curling robot prepares to throw a stone during a human versus robot curling competition on 28 January 2022 in Harbin, Heilongjiang Province of China. The curling robots are developed by researchers from the Harbin Institute of Technology. Photo by Jiang Hui/China News Service/Getty Images

The Da Vinci code

"Da
Visitors attend the X Media Art Museum, a digital arts and new media museum, on 29 January 2022 in Istanbul, Turkey. The exhibition opened its doors to art lovers, to view the works of Leonardo Da Vinci combined with artificial intelligence. Photo by Cem Tekkesinoglu/dia images/Getty Images

Boy you turn me

"Upside-down
People pose for photos outside the upside-down house, in Guatavita, near Bogotá, Colombia, on 29 January 2022. The house was designed by its Austrian owner Fritz Schall. Photo by Juan Barreto/AFP/Getty Images