While there's still a lot that astrophysicists don't know about the Big Bang, there are some things we do know. So today, let's get caught up on the Big Bang basics.

Earth didn't always have the land beneath your feet, but what might have caused it to form is a bit of a mystery.

Sometimes looking into a pool of a toxic liquid holds the secrets of the universe–or maybe just this one time.

Mountain ranges usually don't form in the middle of continents. Except for the Rocky Mountains. We'll go into the baffling Laramide Orogeny and a few possible reasons why the Rockies might be in the wrong place.

On her way to winning the 2023 Nobel Prize for her pioneering work on mRNA vaccines, Katalin Karikó lived a life made for the big screen. <br/>

Physicists have been struggling for some time to figure out why our universe is so comfy. Why, for example, are the fundamental constants - like the mass of the electron or the strength of the forces - just right for the emergence of...

From Stargate to Interstellar, wormholes are our favorite method for traveling across fictional universes. But they are also a very serious field of study for some of our greatest minds over the last century. So what’s the holdup? When...

The universe is big, but it’s peanuts compared to the eternally inflating multiverse. But just how many universes are there? What are they like? And most importantly, what can they tell us about … aliens?

Imagine it: the observable...

Objective Collapse Theories offer a explanation of quantum mechanics that is at once brand new and based in classical mechanics. In the world of quantum mechanics, it’s no big deal for particles to be in multiple different states at the...

The moment you started observing reality, you hopelessly polluted any conclusions you might make about it. The anthropic principle guarantees that you are NOT seeing the universe in most typical state. But used correctly, this highly...

The great physicist Hermann Weyl once said: "My work always tried to unite the true with the beautiful, but when I had to choose one or the other, I usually chose the beautiful." But is this actually good advice for doing physics?

The Kepler telescope recently noticed a strange partial eclipse that some have speculated could be a Dyson Sphere. Are Dyson Sphere's possible? Are they practical? What other alternatives to futuristic energy capture do we have to choose...

The universe is expanding, and that expansion is accelerating. We don’t know what’s causing that acceleration, but that hasn’t stopped us from giving it a name. We call this unknown influence dark energy. The observed acceleration is,...

If you know one thing about pterosaurs, it’s that they’re flyers. And while pterosaurs may be well-known for their domination of the skies in the Mesozoic Era, they didn’t live their entire lives in the air. So how did we figure this...

Scientists had no idea what type of organisms the life forms of the Ediacaran were—lichen, colonies of bacteria, fungi or something else. It turns out, the key to solving the puzzle of Precambrian life was a tiny bit of fossilized fat.

As a scientific concept, evolution was revolutionary when it was first introduced. With the help of all three of our hosts and the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History’s new Deep Time Hall, we’ll try to explain how evolution...

What’s the real story of the dodo? How did such a unique bird even evolve in the first place? And are we really responsible for its extinction?

The Snake Detection Hypothesis proposes that the ability to quickly spot and avoid snakes is deeply embedded in primates, including us - an evolutionary consequence of the danger snakes have posed to us over millions of years.

Fossil evidence suggests Diictodon used burrows to breed, and that a parent stayed behind to feed and protect their young. And the parent that stayed behind? It might’ve been the male.

Every year, hundreds of millions of people voluntarily turn their lives upside down by setting their clocks forward one hour in the spring and back one hour in the autumn on a particular date mandated by the government wherever they...

Humans may use fiber optic technology to make everything from novelty desk toys to high speed internet cables, but Nature has its own ideas. For decades, scientists have debated to what extent polar bears may use the optical properties...

Of all the food options in the world, you'd think that feces would be low on anyone's preference list. But for these animals, eating poop can be anything from a delicacy to a health food - and yes, humans are on the list too.

Sponges might not look like particularly complex animals, but they've had billions of years to evolve their own special systems. And one of those systems might involve sending messages through their body in the form of light.

If you picture a rocket launch, do you imagine it taking off from a hot air balloon? In this episode, we'll learn how using balloons to launch sounding rockets advanced our understanding of planet Earth, radiation, and how to keep...