The elephantnose fish likes to hang around in the dark ocean depths rooting out critters from deep-sea mud with its snout. These peculiar fish have an electric organ, which allows them to generate an electric field. In stormy waters eyes cannot be relied on so fish can sense their environment using a line of special cells along their bodies.

At well over four and a half billion years of age, the sun is one of about 100 billion stars in the Milky Way and by far the largest object in our solar system. The energy it makes every second could power the USA for 9 million years. Sunspots are wells of intense magnetic energy on the sun’s surface.

The nerve cells pictured play an important role in our interactions with food, money and addictive drugs. Activated by unexpected rewards, they make a chemical called dopamine, which is believed to affect memory formation in the brain. These neurons (pictured in rat brain) die off during Parkinson’s disease.

How did the Universe come to look the way it does today? The Millenium simulation (pictured) uses maths to model the evolution of the Universe. The model predicts how changes in dark matter gave rise to galaxies, each one composed of stars and planets.

Cells are so tightly packed together in our bodies that telling one kind from another can be tricky. Scientists use fluorescent labels to tag different cells in a tissue. The coloured dots in this picture pin-point the various kinds of blood cell in a mouse spleen. Red and white cells made here help the body to fight infections.

Scientists have measured the heat left over after the Big Bang to make this map of the Universe. Microwaves in the sky hold clues about how stars and galaxies formed as the Universe got bigger and cooler. A satellite called the WMAP (Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe) was sent into space by NASA to measure temperature changes.

Slime mould is an amazing creature that can live both as single cells and huge cellular clumps or ‘slugs’. When there is plenty of food, cells graze independently, but when stocks decline they clump together forming exquisite spiral patterns.

These finger-like projections are cometary knots, part of the Helix nebula. The heads of each projection are each at least twice the size of our solar system. The tails stretch another 100 billion miles. Astronomers think the knots formed through gases colliding at different temperatures.

A trail of tiny pieces of DNA flow from a dying human sperm cell nucleus. Damaged cells are placed in gel on a microscope slide and stimulated by an electric current. The gel acts like a molecular sieve separating the bits of DNA relative to their size.

Comets have rocky, dusty, icy hearts. These floating lumps travel around the Sun. Sometimes you can see their tail. As they get closer to the Sun they begin to melt. With time their path may be influenced by other planets. In this way, they can be thrown out of the Solar System or get so close to the Sun that they burn up.