SciShow
What Are These Weird Rings In Space?
Over the past few years, astronomers have discovered their own kind of UFO called Odd Radio Circles, aka ORCs. They're a little too round, and a little too invisible at non-radio wavelengths, to immediately know what they are and what's...
SciShow
What Shape Are Black Holes? Yes.
What shape is the event horizon of a black hole? Well, the answer to that question changes if our universe is hiding an extra dimension (or more). Black holes could come in an infinite number of shapes — including a precisely spinning...
SciShow
Should We Be Raising Kids Barefoot?
While most of us only think about our shoes in terms of how they complete our outfits, there's a lot more impact that your choice of footwear can have on your life. Turns out that shoes can change how your feet grow and develop. So is it...
SciShow
The Crabs That Revolutionized Neuroscience
We used to think neural circuits were rigid and robotic, but now we know that's not true -- thanks to crab stomachs.
SciShow
Does COVID Mess With Your DNA?
As more and more are infected with COVID-19, there's a growing group of people who have what's called Long COVID, meaning they still have symptoms for weeks or months after getting sick. While we still don't know for sure the cause of...
SciShow
Burn Your Waste With... Water?
Supercritical water produces fire without flames, which is great for making clean drinking water from our waste in space or breaking down forever chemicals here on Earth.
SciShow
Does the Food Chain Stop At Jellyfish?
Jellyfish aren't the most nutritious animals in the ocean. Yet sea turtles and many other organisms get their nutrition from almost nothing else. Here's why they don't totally starve to death.
SciShow
How to See Inside Anything
You might think of x-rays as the go-to particle to see through solid objects. But there's a subatomic particle out there that can see through everything from volcanos to lead shielding in nuclear reactors. It's called a muon, and...
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
This Parasite Needs To Ruin Three Lives
Why do so many parasites, especially helminths aka flatworms, jump around as many as THREE hosts to complete their life cycle? Why isn't one host good enough for them? We'll find out why parasites evolve complex life cycles that don't...
SciShow
The Return of Thalidomide
Thalidomide is the infamous drug at the heart of one of the world's worst drug safety catastrophes in modern medicine. And yet, more recent research is finding that thalidomide is still worth using, despite the risks. So what makes this...
SciShow
Can We Treat Alzheimer's With Period Blood?
From diabetes to Alzheimer's, there's a lot that we hope to be able to treat using stem cell therapies. But the stem cells we use tend to be hard to come by. But it turns out there's a new source of stem cells that has researchers...
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
Fentanyl is Very Deadly… Here's Why
Fentanyl has become a primary cause of the opioid overdose epidemic in the past decade. But what is it about this drug that's so dangerous? There's more to the story than meets the eye. If you’re ever in the position where you think...
SciShow
Can Sponges “Think” Using Light?
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.
SciShow
It's Raining Antibiotic Resistant Bacteria
Bacteria are everywhere, including clouds, and the rain that falls from them. Not only can they survive the harsh environment and hitchhike across continents, they can share their genes, too. Including the ones that make them resistant...
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...
SciShow
These Animals Lost Their Stomachs. Why?
What do a platypus, a pufferfish, and a seahorse have in common? Why, they all managed to evolve themselves out of having a working stomach! The reasons why might vary, as well as how they manage to live their lives without them, but...
SciShow
Launching Rockets Mid-Air
If you picture a rocket launch, do you imagine it taking off from a hot air balloon? In this episode, we'll learn how using balloons to launch sounding rockets advanced our understanding of planet Earth, radiation, and how to keep...
SciShow
The WHO Says Diet Soda Causes Cancer. Does It?
The World Health organization recently added aspartame, an artificial sweetener used in diet soda and tea, to its list of possibly carcinogenic substances. But will diet soda really give you cancer? We look at the science behind the...
SciShow
There's Water on...the Sun?
With an effective surface temperature of roughly 5,500 degrees Celsius, you might think water couldn't survive on the Sun. Well, scientists debated whether or not it was there for nearly a century, and it turns out, it can!
SciShow
The Weight of “Nothing” Could Mean Everything (to Physics)
Deep in a Sardinian mine, researchers are constructing an experiment that hopes to solve what's known as The Worst Prediction In The History of Physics, and pin down the true identity of dark energy.
SciShow
The Weird Reason More Bridges Are About to Fail
While they are incredible engineering marvels, we don't think about bridges all that much. But there's a good reason we should all be thinking about our bridges, since there's a weird reason that more of them might be at risk of failure...
SciShow
The New Addiction Treatment We Found By Mistake
It's no secret that substance use disorders can wreak havoc on peoples' lives, so anything that we could do to mitigate those cravings and addictions is really important. Which is why it's such good news that research into drugs like...