TED Talks
TED: The secret force for limitless energy? Lasers | Tammy Ma
In 2022, physicist Tammy Ma and the team at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory achieved a scientific breakthrough decades in the making: fusion ignition, or the combining of two atoms to generate more energy out of a reaction than...
SciShow Kids
The Driest Places on Earth | SciShow Kids
In this SciShow Kids episode, Jessi and Squeaks learn about amazing places where it almost never rains.
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: Could we build a miniature sun on Earth? | George Zaidan
Stars have cores hot and dense enough to force atomic nuclei together, forming larger, heavier nuclei in a process known as fusion. In this process, the mass of the end products is slightly less than the mass of the initial atoms. But...
SciShow
We Don’t Know What the Sun Is Made Of
Unlike Earth, our Sun is a giant ball of mostly hydrogen and helium. Astronomers managed to figure that one out roughly 100 years ago. But after all this time, they still can't come to an agreement on what "mostly" means, precisely.
SciShow
The Alien Storm That Ate Itself
From cyclones to snowstorms, Earth is home to some spectacular weather events. But they're nothing compared to what you can find on the other planets in our solar system. Magnetic tornadoes? Ammonia mushballs? Let's (not literally) dive...
SciShow
What Color Was the Big Bang?
If you could survive a trip to the very first moments of reality as we know it, what color would you see?
SciShow
The Moon is Rusting. It's the Earth's Fault.
The Moon is typically 380,000-ish kilometers from the Earth, so it doesn't seem like they have that much of a direct influence on one another. However, the presence of hematite on the lunar surface suggests our planet is causing the Moon...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: Something weird is happening in our galaxy | Ashkbiz Danehkar
In 2010, NASA announced the discovery of a never-before-seen galactic object: two gigantic gaseous bubbles, each emanating an impressive 25,000 light years from the center of the Milky Way. Astronomers were perplexed: what created these...
SciShow
This Probe Doesn’t Melt When it’s 1 Million Degrees Outside
In 2021, the Parker Solar Probe fulfilled its mission to “touch the Sun”. But the temperature over there was millions of degrees Celsius. How did the spacecraft not melt?
Curated Video
New and Ancient Lessons from Lunar Eclipses
Ancient perceptions of lunar eclipses weren’t as primitive as one might think. Some rigorous math was applied to these cosmic events that shaped our understanding of the solar system.
SciShow
How Do You Date a Star?
Figuring out the age of a blinking speck in the sky is a difficult feat, especially if considering how many types of stars there are. This is where a Hertzsprung-Russell meets a gyrochronologist.
SciShow
Great Minds: Conny Aerts, the Starquake Professor
While doing some light reading of data from a telescope, Conny Aerts made a breakthrough that allowed her to lead the charge in the field of asteroseismology and win her the 2022 Kavli Prize in Astrophysics.
SciShow
Don’t Look At the Sun! …Unless | Compilation
It’s common knowledge that you should never look directly at the sun. But, like, what about during an eclipse? Surely you can look then?
SciShow
How Blocking the Sun Makes Mars Hotter
If we’re going to send people to Mars someday, we’re going to need to be very conscious of the challenges presented in this endeavor. And at the top of that list is the ferocious nature of dust on the barren planet.
SciShow
How Many Suns Can One Planet Have?
Earth and the other seven planets in our solar system have only one star: the Sun. Years ago, astronomers found the first exoplanet that had two stars. They also found one with three stars. And four. Just how many stars can one planet have?
PBS
Planck's Constant and The Origin of Quantum Mechanics | Space Time | PBS Digital Studios
Planck's Length is the length below which the concept of length loses its meaning. What exactly does that mean and what are the incredible implications this fact has upon our reality? To find out check out this episode of Space Time...
PBS
Can We Survive the Destruction of the Earth? ft. Neal Stephenson
What do we do to protect ourselves from extinction level events? And what if some of those events are unavoidable? Can we survive adrift in space? Find out in this episode of Space Time.
PBS
Where Did Water Come From?
Mercury, Venus, and Mars are all super low on water – so where did ours come from and why do we have so much of it? We think our water came from a few unlikely sources: meteorites, space dust, and even the sun.
PBS
The History of Climate Cycles (and the Woolly Rhino) Explained
Throughout the Pleistocene Epoch, the range of the woolly rhino grew and shrank in sync with global climate. So what caused the climate -- and the range of the woolly rhino -- to cycle back and forth between such extremes?
Be Smart
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....
PBS
Juno to Reveal Jupiter's Violent Past
On July 4th 2016, the Juno spacecraft entered orbit around the planet Jupiter after leaving earth five years ago. The Juno probe will tell us what lies inside the mysterious gas giant and with this information we’ll better understand the...
SciShow
The Sun Is Green
The Sun is green, actually. We'll go into why the blackbody effect means the Sun emits more green visible light than any other color, and why evolution and color perception mean it's ok to see it as yellow, anyway.
SciShow
Is That “New Car Smell” Dangerous?
Some of us can't get enough of that new car smell. But certain volatile organic compounds (VOCs) that help create this aroma are linked to cancer. While this doesn't mean new car smell definitely increases your chance of getting cancer,...
SciShow
The Southern Hemisphere is Colder, Stormier, and... Cleaner?
You'd think that the Northern and Southern Hemispheres would be basically symmetrical -- that since our planet is a ball, the climate, temperature, and weather patterns would be the same on top as on the bottom. But there are some...