TED-Ed
Could you survive the real Twilight Zone? | Philip Renaud and Kenneth Kostel
You're traveling deep beneath the ocean's surface, where faint lights flicker and toothy grins flash. Your mission is to survive these depths and journey to the surface after sundown to feed. And as a hatchetfish, almost every other...
Crash Course
Cathedrals and Universities: Crash Course History of Science
Until roughly 1100, there were relatively few places of knowledge-making. Monasteries and abbeys had special rooms called scriptoria where monks copied manuscripts by hand. But the biggest places where knowledge was made were the Gothic...
SciShow
5 Tiny Bots Inspired by Nature
The creation of tiny robots could enable the exploration of new frontiers, from the tightest spaces in the human body to the most remote ecosystems. Here are 5 little bots that draw inspiration from nature to get the job done.
TED Talks
TED: A demo of wireless electricity | Eric Giler
Eric Giler wants to untangle our wired lives with cable-free electric power. Here, he covers what this sci-fi tech offers, and demos MIT's breakthrough version, WiTricity -- a near-to-market invention that may soon recharge your cell...
MinuteEarth
Can Math Explain How Animals Get Their Patterns?
Here are some handy keywords to get your googling started: Reaction-diffusion system: A hypothetical system in which multiple chemical substances diffuse through a defined space at different rates and react with one another, thereby...
SciShow
Trees: The Dating Apps For Bears
Bears are known for scratching their backs on trees, but it turns out that they might be using trees as a dating app.
SciShow
The Terrifying Promise of Robot Bugs
Imitating nature to build a better (or possibly more terrifying) future. We've been trying to build flapping-wing robots for hundreds of years, and now, ornithopters are finally being developed, and may be used mostly for military...
TED Talks
TED: 10 years to transform the future of humanity -- or destabilize the planet | Johan Rockström
For the first time, we are forced to consider the real risk of destabilizing the entire planet, says climate impact scholar Johan Rockström. In a talk backed by vivid animations of the climate crisis, he shows how nine out of the 15 big...
TED Talks
Dina Zielinski: How we can store digital data in DNA
From floppy disks to thumb drives, every method of storing data eventually becomes obsolete. What if we could find a way to store all the world's data forever? Bioinformatician Dina Zielinski shares the science behind a solution that's...
Be Smart
The Deadpool Salamander That Can Regrow Limbs
Axolotls are special salamanders. Not only to they stay in their juvenile form their whole lives, they can regenerate entire limbs! Studying how they do it could change the way we treat human limb injuries.
TED Talks
Angela Belcher: Using nature to grow batteries
Inspired by an abalone shell, Angela Belcher programs viruses to make elegant nanoscale structures that humans can use. Selecting for high-performing genes through directed evolution, she's produced viruses that can construct powerful...
TED Talks
TED: Adventures of an asteroid hunter | Carrie Nugent
TeD Fellow Carrie Nugent is an asteroid hunter -- part of a group of scientists working to discover and catalog our oldest and most numerous cosmic neighbors. Why keep an eye out for asteroids? In this short, fact-filled talk, Nugent...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: Coneheads, egg stacks and anteater attacks: The reign of a termite queen | Barbara Thorne
A single determined termite braves countless threats to participate in the only flight of her lifetime. She evades the onslaught of predators as she lands, flips off her wings, secretes pheromones, and attracts a mate. But she's not...
SciShow
The Northern Hemisphere’s Very Own Giant Penguins (Sort Of)
Today, penguins are found mainly in the Southern Hemisphere. But fossils have revealed giant lookalikes to these swimming birds further up north, spurring questions of how they evolved and what happened to them.
TED Talks
TED: How human noise affects ocean habitats | Kate Stafford
Oceanographer Kate Stafford lowers us into the sonically rich depths of the Arctic Ocean, where ice groans, whales sing to communicate over vast distances -- and climate change and human noise threaten to alter the environment in ways we...
SciShow
Why Do People Kill? And Other Revelations Of Human Nature
There are a lot of things that are still not fully understood about the species Homo sapiens - what makes us US? What makes us move the way we do, think the way we do, and kill the way we do? Today on SciShow News, Hank gives us a little...
SciShow
3 Weird Ways Olde Tyme People Got High
Humans have been processing plants for their narcotic effects for at least 5000 years, historically for ceremonial purposes, to deal with harsh environmental conditions or difficult situations, and sometimes even to supplement...
TED Talks
TED: The tiny creature that secretly powers the planet | Penny Chisholm
Oceanographer Penny Chisholm introduces us to an amazing little being: Prochlorococcus, the most abundant photosynthetic species on the planet. A marine microbe that has existed for millions of years, Prochlorococcus wasn't discovered...
TED Talks
David Brooks: Should you live for your r_sum_ ... or your eulogy?
Within each of us are two selves, suggests David Brooks in this meditative short talk: the self who craves success, who builds a r_sum_, and the self who seeks connection, community, love -- the values that make for a great eulogy....
TED Talks
TED: How to design mosquitoes out of cities | Cameron Webb
As cities adopt greener, more sustainable designs, there's risk of a dangerous and unwelcome tenant moving in: mosquitoes. Researcher Cameron Webb explains what urban planners and the general public need to understand about mosquitoes --...
SciShow
Do You Need 10,000 Steps a Day?
There are a whole lot of people out there who have bought into the notion that, in order to be physically fit, you should aim for taking 10,000 steps a day. But where did this idea come from, and how did we all agree on this magical,...
TED Talks
TED: If trees could speak | Elif Shafak
How do we tell stories of humanity and nature at a time when our planet is burning? Novelist Elif Shafak invites us to listen to the trees, whose experience of time, stillness and impermanence is utterly different from our own. "Hidden...
TED Talks
Victoria Gill: What a nun can teach a scientist about ecology
To save the achoque -- an exotic (and adorable) salamander found in a lake in northern Mexico -- scientists teamed up with an unexpected research partner: a group of nuns called the Sisters of the Immaculate Health. In this delightful...
TED Talks
Bilal Bomani: Plant fuels that could power a jet
Algae plus salt water equals ... fuel? At TEDxNASA@SiliconValley, Bilal Bomani reveals a self-sustaining ecosystem that produces biofuels -- without wasting arable land or fresh water.