When you see a bunch of fossils in a museum, you might not think about how unlikely it is that they got there. But there's a lot of lucky dice rolls that landed that mastodon in the museum, and researchers are really motivated to find...

Imagine you could remember everything that ever happened to you. Would it be a blessing, or a curse? Super rememberers, people with highly superior autobiographical memory or HSAM, have the answer -- and may also be able to tell us how...

From hypothetical magnetic levitation trains and space elevators that aren't even attached to the ground, to very real space cannons tested in the 1960s, humans have come up with a lot of ways to hurl stuff into outer...

How can the lessons of the past help us navigate the turbulence of the present and future? Social philosopher Roman Krznaric explores why history isn’t just a record of what’s gone wrong — it’s also full of solutions, resilience and...

From its life-sustaining energy to its explosive geomagnetic storms, the Sun has many mysteries, says astrophysicist Nour E. Rawafi. He sheds light on NASA's latest endeavor to better understand our fiery neighbor and its impact on the...

What if AI could help connect you with the right medical care, exactly when you need it? Health systems entrepreneur, surgeon and TED Fellow Mohamed Aburawi explores how his digital health platform, Speetar, uses AI to bridge the...

Dana R. Fisher calls herself an "apocalyptic optimist" based on her research as a sociologist of large social movements. Her studies suggest that ever-increasing climate disasters will get people out in the streets demanding the action...

Have you ever wondered why you look up and see a dark sky at night?

Where does all the stuff in the universe come from?

Want to learn more about the topic in this week's video? Here are some keywords/phrases to get your googling started: - Mass Extinction Event: a significant, global decrease in the diversity of life - "Big 5": The five biggest mass...

At the end of World War II, the nations of Europe were a shambles. Today we'll learn about how the various countries and blocs approached the problem of rebuilding their infrastructure and helping their residents recover. You'll learn...

Magnets are amazingly strong... but there's a very easy way to destroy them. All you need to know is a little bit about ferromagnetism, paramagnetism, and temperature!

Concrete doesn't dry - it sets!

Memories are the architects of our identity, says technologist Pau Aleikum Garcia, but they're not permanent. Photos can be lost amid political unrest or natural disaster, while illnesses like Alzhemier's can rob people of their past. He...

Asano Naganori, lord of Akō domain, fixed his gaze on Kira Yoshinaka, a senior master of ceremony. Asano extended his short sword, charged through the castle, and struck Kira. While the wound wasn’t fatal, its consequences would be. What...

We can make clocks that keep accurate time for millions of years. We can also make clocks with such high resolution they tick one billion billion times per second. So why can't we make a clock that does both?

Natural history is full of living things that were long thought to have gone extinct only to show up again, alive and well. Paleontologists have a word for these kinds of organisms: They call them Lazarus taxa.

Will you forgive me? asks community leader Sean Goode. He proposes that the promise of forgiveness before wrongdoing — what he calls "unapologetic grace" — can empower people to share their truths and create space to bridge our differences.

In honor of the spookiest time of year, let's take a look at the spookiest-named things in the cosmos.

Mars’s moon, Phobos, is striped with grooves all across its surface. But if one theory about where they came from is true, does that mean this moon might be on its way out?

The Nobel prize in physics this year went to black holes. Generally speaking. Specifically, it was shared by the astronomers who revealed to us the Milky Way’s central black hole and by Roger Penrose, who proved that in general...

The Milky Way galaxy is relatively calm by the destructive standards of the rest of the Universe, and compared to its own very violent past. But just recently we discovered that its violent past was much more recent than we thought - and...

What is inside a black hole? Inevitable crushing doom? Gateways to other universes? Weird, multidimensional libraries? If you’ve ever wanted to know then you might be in luck - Some physicists have argued that you’re inside one right now.

Earth’s magnetic field protects us from deadly space radiation. What if it were drastically weakened, as a precursor to flipping upside down? I mean, it has before … many, many times..

Spaceship Earth has a literal deflector...