PBS
An Interview with Minecraft EDU Creator Joel Levin
If you saw our recent episode on Minecraft EDU, then you'll be interested in Mike's talk with it's creator, Joel Levin!
PBS
Extinction by Gamma-Ray Burst
Find out about the last time and the next time the Earth will be hit by a Gamma-ray Burst.
PBS
Dissecting Hypercubes with Pascal's Triangle
What does the inside of a tesseract look like? Pascal's Triangle can tell us.
PBS
How Two Microbes Changed History
What if I told you that, more than two billion years ago, some tiny living thing started to live inside another living thing .... and never left? And now, the descendants of both of those things are in you?
PBS
There's No Such Thing as Online?!?
From Facebook to bank accounts, you always have some sort of online presence, whether you're actively engaging in front of a screen or not. Yet this is still a word we use to describe our engagement with the Internet. So we have to ask,...
PBS
Are LOLCats and Internet Memes Art?
We've all seen and shared a few LOLCats and Internet Memes in our time, but is it possible that these images and videos are actually a new form of art? Idea Channel takes a closer look at how memes function in our new interconnected...
PBS
Are Space and Time An Illusion?
This episode of Space Time is actually about Spacetime, so pull up a chair, grab your favorite snack, and buckle up, because this episode is going to be a TRIP. Gabe explores what reality is, what "time" is, and why what you think those...
PBS
The Great Snake Debate
90 million years ago, an ancient snake known as Najash had...legs. It is by no means the only snake to have limbs either. But what's even stranger: we're not at all sure where it came from.
PBS
The Most Useful Fossils In The World
For decades, one of the most abundant kinds of fossils on Earth, numbering in the millions of specimens, was a mystery to paleontologists. But geologists discovered that these mysterious fossils could basically be used to tell time in...
PBS
What Does Dark Energy Really Do?
How does dark energy affect the universe's expansion? Measuring past expansion history should tell us the future expansion without ever having to count any galaxies. To measure this we need to measure the redshift-distance relationship,...
PBS
Can We Combine pi & e to Make a Rational Number?
Can you produce a rational number by exchanging infinitely many digits of pi and e?
PBS
A Hierarchy of Infinities
There are different sizes of infinity. It turns out that some are larger than others. Mathematician Kelsey Houston-Edwards breaks down what these different sizes are and where they belong in The Hierarchy of Infinities.
PBS
Did Life on Earth Come from Space?
How did life on Earth get started? Did life on Earth originate on another planet? Either Mars, or in a distant solar system? Could Earth life have spread to have seeded life elsewhere? Let's see what modern science has to say about the...
PBS
Should "Happy Birthday" be Protected by Copyright?
Did you know the rights to "Happy Birthday" are still privately held today? Copyright was originally created for two reasons: to protect the original creators so they could benefit from their work AND have creative works enter the Public...
PBS
A Brief History of Geologic Time
By looking at the layers beneath our feet, geologists have been able to identify and describe crucial episodes in life's history. These key events frame the chapters in the story of life on earth and the system we use to bind all these...
PBS
How Infinity Explains the Finite
Peano arithmetic proves many theories in mathematics but does have its limits. In order to prove certain things you have to step beyond these axioms. Sometimes you need infinity.
PBS
Where Did Viruses Come From?
There are fossils of viruses, of sorts, preserved in the DNA of the hosts that they've infected. Including you. This molecular fossil trail can help us understand where viruses came from, how they evolved and it can even help us tackle...
PBS
History's Most Powerful Plants
Fossil fuels are made from the remains of extinct organisms that have been exposed to millions of years of heat and pressure. But in the case of coal, these organisms consisted largely of some downright bizarre plants that once covered...
PBS
How Sex Became A Thing
We don't know which living thing was the very first to arrive at the totally revolutionary process that is sexual reproduction but we can follow the history of how (and why) sex became a thing.
PBS
Cosmic Microwave Background Explained
HAS SPACE ALWAYS BEEN BLACK? As long as we've been around, YES. But the universe gets much more exciting, AND much BRIGHTER, as we start winding our clocks back to the early days of the universe. Near the beginning of the universe, when...
PBS
The Origin of Our First Interstellar Visitor
We were recently visited by a traveler from outside our solar system. This is the first time we've ever seen an object that came to us from interstellar space. It's name is 'Oumuamua.
PBS
What Physics Teachers Get Wrong About Tides!
We all know tides have something to do with gravity from the Moon and Sun, but if gravity affects the motion of all objects equally, then how come oceans have large tides while other bodies of water don't? It's because your mental...
PBS
The Missing Mass Mystery
For years, astronomers have been unable to find up to half of the baryonic matter in the universe. We may just have solved this problem.
PBS
How Asteroid Mining Will Save Earth
The days of oil may be numbered, but there's another natural resource that's never been touched, Asteroids.