Weasels have an extreme body plan that may push the boundaries of what’s metabolically possible. So when and how did this happen? Why'd the weasels get so skinny?

The Most Unbelievable Image Ever Captured by Hubble Space Telescope

Why does everyone use a 7 day week, and where did it come from? Where do the names of the days come from? And who can we blame for Mondays? Here’s the true story of one of the oldest human customs still in use today. It gets a little...

Since the 1950s, governments, companies, and researchers have been planting flags among the stars. But while it might seem like there's plenty of room in space, some pieces of celestial real estate are more valuable than others. As far...

The word "sustainability" gets thrown around a lot these days. But what does it actually mean for humanity to be sustainable? Environmental data scientist Hannah Ritchie digs into the numbers behind human progress across centuries,...

Technologist Yat Siu believes the "open metaverse" -- a decentralized version of the internet also known as web3 -- is laying the foundation for a freer, fairer, more prosperous society. In a future-focused talk, he explores the...

You and the professor have driven your DeLorean back to the past to fix issues with the spacetime continuum caused by your time traveling. But another DeLorean appears with older versions of you and the professor. The professors panic...

Decision theorist Eliezer Yudkowsky has a simple message: superintelligent AI could probably kill us all. So the question becomes: Is it possible to build powerful artificial minds that are obedient, even benevolent? In a fiery talk,...

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.

Hunting for rogue planets is like hunting for an invisible needle in a haystack. But we're getting a much clearer view thanks to gravitational microlensing surveys. And it looks like there are a LOT more of them out there than we thought.

There are two types of rain, and one of them is almost impossible to forecast.

Some plants can drink water from the air - and that has some weird effects on the forests where they live.

Once upon a time, we coexisted with other human species. And there’s one place on Earth that may have taught us more about that than any other single site.

Today, NASA announced that there is...occasionally...flowing, liquid water on the surface of Mars. What?!

Hard-to-reach places, like the Amazon rainforest, can hide traces of past civilizations. But scientists are finding ways to explore these areas from above and discover the effects these ancient peoples had on their environment.

Olympic National Park is temporarily closed as Washington, the US, and the world work to mitigate the spread of the COVID-19 virus. We filmed this series in early January and are currently at home practicing social distancing. We hope...

Units are a major way we describe the world around us, and by looking at the scientists some of them are named after, we can get a sense of how we’ve learned so much about our universe.

Both North and South America have their own species of marsupial, the opossum, but how they got so far away from their Australian relatives is a bit of a mystery.

What do you see in clouds? Bunnies? Zombies? The face of Nic Cage? There are some kinds of clouds that, while rare, make even weirder shapes -- like pancakes, rolling cylinders, and shimmery rainbows

If the 10 kilometer wide asteroid that hit the Earth 66 million years ago hit just a few minutes later, would the outcome of the living creatures here have been different?

This episode is brought to you by the Music for Scientists album! Check out “The Idea” music video here: • The Idea, written... . Given just a little time, bacteria could outgrow earth, so what's stopping them?

Though we probably won’t find a literal Atlantis beneath the sea, that doesn’t mean that a human settlement hasn’t ever been lost to the water. Meet Doggerland.

With their squishy bodies and color-changing abilities, octopuses and other cephalopods already look like our planet’s resident aliens. But researchers have discovered yet another thing that separates them from most other animals on...

How does heat affect airplanes? Turns out heat, speed and density connect to create dangerous situations.