TED Talks
TED: What the discovery of exoplanets reveals about the universe | Jessie Christiansen
What are the planets outside our solar system like? Astrophysicist and TED Fellow Jessie Christiansen has helped find thousands of them (and counting), and the variety is more wonderful and wild than you might imagine. She shares details...
TED Talks
TED: The marvels and mysteries revealed by the James Webb Space Telescope | Heidi Hammel and Nadia Drake
From favorite moons to the search for alien life, astronomer Heidi Hammel discusses the latest in astronomy and the breakthrough innovations behind her work with NASA's James Webb Space Telescope. In conversation with science journalist...
PBS
Hunt for alien life zooms in on newly discovered solar system
Astronomers have identified seven Earth-sized planets orbiting a star that's just a mere 230 trillion miles from our own planet, raising the tantalizing prospect of life in a solar system beyond our own. Science correspondent Miles...
Crash Course
The Evolutionary Epic Crash Course Big History 5
In which John Green, Hank Green, and Emily Graslie teach you about evolution. So, in the last 3.8 billion years, life on Earth has evolved from single-celled prokaryotes to the dizzying array of life we have today. So how did all this...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: Newton's three-body problem explained | Fabio Pacucci
In 2009, researchers ran a simple experiment. They took everything we know about our solar system and calculated where every planet would be up to 5 billion years in the future. They ran over 2,000 simulations, and the astonishing...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: Chris Anderson (TED): Questions no one knows the answers to
TED curator Chris Anderson shares his obsession with questions that no one (yet) knows the answers to. A short intro leads into two questions: Why can't we see evidence of alien life? And how many universes are there?
PBS
The Future of Space Telescopes
The Kepler mission has determined that terrestrial planets are extremely common, and may orbit most stars in the Milky Way. But these planets are difficult to directly image because they're dense and small. Our Sun is about ten billion...
PBS
First Detection of Life
In 1990, an experiment conceived by Carl Sagan was performed using using the Galileo spacecraft. The purpose? To detect life on a planet based on measurements by a space probe. The experiment was successful, and abundant life was...
TED Talks
TED: Finding planets around other stars | Lucianne Walkowicz
How do we find planets -- even habitable planets -- around other stars? By looking for tiny dimming as a planet passes in front of its sun, TED Fellow Lucianne Walkowicz and the Kepler mission have found some 1,200 potential new...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: Could we harness the power of a black hole? | Fabio Pacucci
Imagine a distant future when humans reach beyond Earth, forge cities on planets thousands of light-years away, and maintain a galactic web of trade and transport. What would it take to make that leap? And where would we get enough...
SciShow
3 Freaky Things Explained: Bug Sex, Polar Vortex and Chain Fountain!
Hank shares the latest developments in science, this week demystifying three freaky things in nature: the polar vortex, why some bugs are infertile, and how a chain can appear to defy gravity. You're welcome!
SciShow
How Wiretapping Helped Transform Astronomy
Early telegraph operators and WWI spies picked up some weird noises on radio waves. As it turned out, they were actually listening to plasma waves in Earth’s magnetic field lines!
Crash Course Kids
Weather In Space (the Rocky Planets)
Do other planets have weather? It turns out that, yes, they do! But, the weather isn't all the same on other planets because of things like atmosphere. In this episode of Crash Course Kids, Sabrina takes us on a tour of the weather on...
SciShow
Cloudy With A Chance Of Aliens: How We Look for Extraterrestrial Life
What do astronomers look for when they study exoplanets for signs of alien life? Hank explains how space telescopes are already yielding tantalizing clues of what other worlds might hold -- including water! -- and how the next generation...
Crash Course
White Dwarfs & Planetary Nebulae
Today Phil follows up last week’s look at the death of low mass stars with what comes next: a white dwarf. White dwarfs are incredibly hot and dense objects roughly the size of Earth. They also can form planetary nebulae: huge,...
Crash Course
Life Begins Crash Course Big History 4
In which Hank and John Green teach you about life on Earth. They won't be giving advice on how life should be lived, because this is a history series. Instead, they'll teach you about the earliest forms of life on Earth, and some of the...
Crash Course
Exploring the Universe Crash Course Big History 2
In which John Green, Hank Green, and Emily Graslie teach you about what happened in the Universe after the big bang. They'll teach you about cosmic background radiation, how a bunch of hydrogen and helium turned into stars, formed...
Crash Course
The Modern Revolution Crash Course Big History 8
In which Hank and John Green teach you a Crash Course on the modern revolution, and the upside of the progress that humanity has made in the last 500 years or so. And while there are two sides to every history, and many of these changes...
SciShow
4 Tiny Missions Answering the Biggest Questions in Astrophysics
The Astrophysics Pioneers program is funding four innovative new missions that read like a best-hits album of the most exciting astronomical frontiers: from galaxy evolution and exoplanets, to neutron star mergers and astroparticle physics.
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: Fabio Pacucci: Can a black hole be destroyed?
Black holes are among the most destructive objects in the universe. Anything that gets too close to a black hole, be it an asteroid, planet, or star, risks being torn apart by its extreme gravitational field. By some accounts, the...
SciShow
There Might be a New Kind of Habitable Planet!
Extreme environments full of life on Earth have led researchers to expand the definition of habitability to something that includes many more planets, potentially leading us to evidence of living things in a dramatically shorter time!...
Crash Course
The Sun & The Earth Crash Course Big History 3
In which John Green, Hank Green, and Emily Graslie teach you about our Sun, and the formation of the planets. We're going to focus on the formation and development of the Earth, because that's where people live. You'll learn about the...