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What Could We See with a Planet-Sized Telescope?
New ReviewThe James Webb Telescope just took a photo of a newly discovered exoplanet. Exciting stuff but the raw image just looks like a small, faint dot—not a fully detailed world. The question is, just how big would a telescope need to be to...
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Why OOH Sounds Different Than AHH
New ReviewHuman language is an incredible thing: a combination of mouth sounds that we combine into words, sentences, poems, and constitutions. They carry meaning, emotion, and power. But underneath it all, language is really just physics. In this...
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The Great Oxygenation
New ReviewLife’s been around on Earth for at least 3.7 billion years. But for most of that time, it was incredibly boring — just simple little cells squirming around in water. It only got interesting in the last few hundred million years. And that...
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How Scorpions Became Earth’s Ultimate Survivors
New ReviewScorpions are a frightening and deadly group of animals. But their venom is one of nature's most unique chemical cocktails. Here’s how scientists are using it for inspiration to design new medicines and pain killers.
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The Truth About Butterfly Metamorphosis (It's Very Weird)
New ReviewDoes any other creature on Earth undergo a life transformation as dramatic as the butterfly? I think not. Unfortunately, children's books about very hungry caterpillars skip all the COOL and WEIRD and GROSS stuff that happens along the...
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Why Some of the Rainbow is Missing
New ReviewOver 200 years ago, scientists were looking at sunlight through a prism when they noticed that part of the rainbow was missing. There were dark lines where there should have been colors. Since then, scientists have unlocked the secrets...
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The Biggest Myth About Innovation
New ReviewThe idea of the lone genius creating everything isn’t just misleading. It’s harmful and wrong. Innovation thrives when people work together, and rather than nice linear paths, new ideas come from chance events and unexpected connections....
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What is the Most Average Thing?
New ReviewWe may not know it, but averages affect our lives every day. Designers and manufacturers use averages to make our houses, cars, shoes and airline seats safer and more comfortable(ish). But calculating averages is way more complicated...
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How Did X Become the Unknown (and so much else)?
New ReviewX is everywhere and it’s probably thanks to math. But why is x the symbol for the unknown?
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How Scientists Made the Hottest Thing Ever
New ReviewAt CERN, physicists are searching for answers to some of the biggest questions ever — like how the universe started and where everything comes from. To get one step closer to an answer, CERN scientists recreated the first moment after...
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Maybe We've Already Made First Contact…
New ReviewThere are hundreds of billions of planets in our galaxy. Scientists now think hundreds of millions of them have conditions where life could arise. What do scientists think are the best ways of reaching out to them? And why do some...
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Why NASA Punched an Asteroid
New ReviewWhere did life come from? It’s one of the biggest questions humans have ever asked — and the answer might be locked in ancient space rocks that were around before life began. To find out, NASA pulled off one of its most ambitious...
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Space is Full of Junk. Here’s How to Clean It Up…
New ReviewWe know pollution is a problem on earth, but we’re filling space with our junk too. And if we don’t figure out a way to clean up space junk, we could end our interstellar dreams before they even get started. Today, we’re visiting some...
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Why the 2024 Solar Eclipse is Such a Big Deal
New ReviewOn April 8, 2024, the Moon’s shadow will fall on Earth, creating a total solar eclipse across North America, and if you have the chance to see it, you don’t want to miss it. It’s an amazing coincidence that total eclipses happen at all —...
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Measuring the Universe With a 14-Billion Light-Year Ruler
New ReviewSince the time of the ancient Greeks, scientists have been constructing a cosmic measuring tape to measure the universe from our own backyard all the way to its ever-expanding edge: the cosmic distance ladder. In this video, we climb...
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Computers Can Predict When You're Going to Die… Here's How
New ReviewPredictive analytics uses math and historical data to make predictions about the future. It’s used in commerce, sports, politics, social media and tons of other places. And as it turns out, people have been using math to predict people’s...
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The Real (Weird) Way We See Numbers
New ReviewWould it surprise you to learn that fish and birds count in pretty much the same way that we do? And that infants can do math? Our animal brains deal with quantities in very specific ways, from quick counts of a few dots to how we...
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Why Trees Look Like Rivers and Also Blood Vessels and Also Lightning…
New ReviewWhy do the same, self-repeating patterns appear in trees, rivers, lightning, and even our bodies? Is there some essential, hidden rule of nature that makes these intricate designs appear all over the place? Let’s talk about fractals.
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Why You See Faces in Things
New ReviewHave you ever looked at a cloud and seen a face? Or the front of a car and seen a face? Or an electrical outlet and seen a face? You definitely have. We all see faces everywhere we look thanks to a fun quirk of the human brain called...
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The Sun is Not the Center of the Solar System
New ReviewDespite what you may have heard or learned in school, the sun is NOT in fact the center of the solar system. And it won’t be until 2027… But this being a science channel, you might be thinking “What the heck is this guy talking about? Of...
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Why Do We Hate Certain Sounds
New ReviewEver wonder why certain sounds make us cringe or even feel sick? Join Joe as he reacts to some of the most hated sounds, from nails on a chalkboard to the infamous "moist," and explores the science of why these sounds are so unbearable...
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The Paradox of Voting
New ReviewPolitical scientist Don Green joins Joe to figure out the complex psychological and social factors that motivate us to vote - or not to. They discuss how and why this decision making process may be in conflict with certain scientific...
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Why Don’t Humans Hibernate?
New ReviewNature has had to come up with some crazy ways to survive harsh winters. But none are weirder than hibernation. Turns out there is more than one kind of hibernation, and studying all these ways that life slows down in the cold might help...
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Camouflage Isn't What It Appears To Be
New ReviewCamouflage is nature’s ultimate game of hide-and-seek, and the secret to winning this game is all in the brain. By studying the masters of disguise, we can see how they trick the brain to make themselves invisible — and what this can...