` 2014’s Most Fascinating Science Pictures `

**Youthful** · 12-27-2014, 07:24 PM

` 2014’s Most Fascinating Science Pictures `

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When Nebraska firefighters put out a blaze on Jan. 3, the water they sprayed froze against this building.

Photographer Jimmy Nelson published a book called "Before They Pass Away" showing the vanishing tribes of the world. Here are three Kazakh men using eagles to hunt.

Mount Sinabung, a large volcano on Sumatra Island in Indonesia, has been erupting on and off since September of 2013, covering the area with ash and forcing thousands of people to flee their homes.

This shot of a Colored Parson's Chameleon at Andasibe-Mantadia National Park in Madagascar was a finalist in the Nature Conservancy's photo contest.

Massive floods caused by a giant storm hit the UK in February.

A reflection on modern life: the Grand Prize winner of the 2014 National Geographic Photo Contest was this shot, “A Node Glows in the Dark," by Brian Yen, who took the picture in Hong Kong.

In 2015, biologist Alexander Semonov will head up the Aquatilis Expedition, an around-the-world journey documenting never-before-seen marine life. Here's a shot he took of one of two known species of Spirobranchus, a small genus of fanworms.

The entire island nation of Kiribati is vanishing because of global warming. On average, land in Kiribati is only six feet above sea level.

A Doctors Without Borders health worker in protective clothing carries a child suspected of having Ebola in the group's treatment center on Oct. 5 in Liberia.

A terrifying forest fire tore through Valparaiso, Chile, in April.

Mike Hollingshead makes a living following the worst storms in America, from snarling tornadoes chewing up the Kansas farmland to supercell thunderstorms massing over the Dakotas. This supercell photograph was taken at a York, Nebraska truck stop after a day of chasing storms.

Residents of Wenzhou, China, woke one July morning to find that a river had turned red as blood due to pollution in the area.

For the Olympus BioScapes Digital Imaging Competition Charles Krebs produced this incredible image of a mosquito larva, which he made using a technique called dark field microscopy.

The tiny Yemeni archipelago of Socotra has very unique plant life, a third of which can be found nowhere else in the world.

This photo was taken in a small Southern Indian village during the Mayana Soora Thiruvizha festival. The festival is devoted to Angalamman, a guardian deity worshiped in Southern India. It was the merit prize winner of the National Geographic Travelers photo contest.

This is one of the winners from the Smithsonian's Wilderness Forever photography competition. Proxy Falls cascades down to a moss-covered forest in the Three Sisters Wilderness in Oregon. The Three Sisters are a series of three volcanoes.

California's drought is leading to dangerous wildfires, like this one near San Diego in May.

A Japanese volcano erupted without warning in September, covering mountain lodges in a coat of ash.

One entry from National Geographic's 2014 Photo Contest shows Burning Man's Thunderdome, run by a group called The Death Guild. In the Thunderdome, combatants use foam bats to assault each other for five minutes while the crowd cheers on from on top the dome.

A slow-moving river of molten lava from an erupting volcano crept over residential and farm property on Hawaii's Big Island at the end of October.