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The Strange and Unexpected Reason Ice is Slippery
I’m guessing you’re pretty familiar with ice. We use it in our drinks, slip on it, skate on it, worry about climate change melting it. But have you ever stopped to really think about this stuff? The freezing and melting of water affects...
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The Most Unbelievable Image Ever Captured by Hubble Space Telescope
The Most Unbelievable Image Ever Captured by Hubble Space Telescope
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The History of Money (From Barter To Bitcoin)
Money. We all use it. But is it real? I mean, you can touch a coin or bill, but who decided that’s worth anything? And what about all those 1’s and 0’s getting swapped and traded by computers thousands of times per second? How are those...
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The Fastest Animals Are Way Faster Than You Think
The fastest animal in nature isn't what you think it is. It's way, way smaller than that. Nature's tiniest creatures warp the laws of physics, and they do it in ways that even human engineers would gawk at. Using the power of super...
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The Evolutionary Purpose of Fun
Animals as simple as bees and as complex as you and me… like to have fun. But what’s the point of fun? Do all animals have fun? And for that matter, what is fun?
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Sunlight Is Way Older Than You Think. Here’s Why…
If the sun instantly switched off like a light bulb–which can’t happen, by the way–then we wouldn’t know for almost 8 and a half minutes. Light travels at the fastest speed there is, but it still takes almost 500 seconds to get to Earth....
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Is This Why We Haven’t Found Alien Civilizations? | STELLAR
Looking up at the stars makes you wonder: what and who is out there? And why haven’t we seen any other intelligent civilizations given the vast size and age of the universe? They’re complicated questions and although we haven’t met any...
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Inside the Lab That Invented the COVID-19 Vaccine
Here we are, just a year after the first news of the coronavirus we now call SARS-CoV-2 and the global pandemic known as COVID-19… and scientists have already developed more than one safe & effective vaccine. How did they do that so...
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I Can't Believe We're Making Another COVID Video
I Can't Believe We're Making Another COVID Video
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How To Go Faster Than Light Speed (Seriously…)
Nothing can travel faster than light — in a vacuum. But when light slows down, sometimes matter can blaze past that speed limit, creating a stunning glow called Cherenkov radiation. We can see this glow in a nuclear reactor as...
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The Universe in a Glass of Wine (Richard Feynman Remixed)
A poet once said, "The whole universe is in a glass of wine." We will probably never know in what sense he said that, for poets do not write to be understood. But it is true that if we look in glass of wine closely enough we see the...
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The Reason COVID-19 Is Our Perfect Enemy (and Why We’ll Beat It)
SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19 are nasty enemies. Invisible, mysterious, and deadly, they have spread around the world and caused much of humanity to hide away. Germs like these only succeed and spread because of our social evolution, and our...
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The Essentials of Energy
The world of energy is a confusing place. What's better, nuclear or solar? What's the difference between fluorescent bulbs and LEDs? What's the difference between energy and power? And what the heck is a kilowatt-hour?!
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Is Your Eye Color Real?
The eyes are often the first thing we see when we look at someone. And when you look at them up close, everyone’s eye color is a kaleidoscope of shapes and hues. How does eye color work? The answer involves some very cool physics, and...
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Is There Life on Earth?
If we lived light years from Earth, how would we know there’s life here? Let’s take a look at the search for extraterrestrial life on habitable exoplanets, and discover what biosignatures would show someone else that we’re here.
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How To See Colors That Aren't Real
What color is a banana? Duh, it’s yellow. But what is yellow? Now that you mention it, how do we see color in the first place? That’s the series of questions that led me to making this video. It started simple and took me down a rabbit...
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How To See a Black Hole with a Planet-Sized Telescope | STELLAR
It took about a century for black holes to go from impossible, to theoretical, to real. And it was just this year, in 2019, when we finally saw the first picture of a black hole! But how to you take a photo of something so massively...
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The Dark Origins of the Scientific Method
500 years before the Scientific Revolution, the mathematician Al-Hassan Ibn al-Haytham spent hours in a dark room studying the light that filtered in. Not only did he revolutionize how we literally see the world, he pioneered the...
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Humans Are Smart. Why Are Babies So Dumb?
The first thing a baby giraffe experiences after being born is a 2 meter fall straight down to the ground. But within an hour, it’s standing, walking, and nursing on its own. And a blue whale calf, after nearly a year growing inside mom,...
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Why No One Can Agree What’s REALLY the Tallest Mountain
What's the tallest mountain on Earth? It might seem like an easy question to answer, but in reality it's one that brings up more NEW questions than answers. It turns out that the way we measure mountains rests on a lot of approximations,...
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Why Dung Beetles Stare At the Stars | IN OUR NATURE
Seemingly distant ecosystems, even half a world apart, are connected in surprising ways. In this special limited series, Emily Graslie and Trace Dominguez join me as we explore the universal rules of life that tie together Earth’s living...