Your eyes don’t always capture the world exactly as a video camera would. But the eyes are remarkably efficient organs, the result of hundreds of millions of years of coevolution with our brains. Michael Mauser outlines the similarities...

On August 21, 2017, the United States will experience its first total solar eclipse since 1979! If you're in the right place at the right time, you're in for a spectacular show!

You can break the speed of light in your back yard! (but don't worry, Einstein is still right)

New Horizons is teaching us all about Pluto! And it's definitely not what we were expecting.

Photographer Stephen Wilkes crafts stunning compositions of landscapes as they transition from day to night, exploring the space-time continuum within a two-dimensional still photograph. Journey with him to iconic locations like the...

Without realizing it, we're fluent in the language of pictures, says illustrator Christoph Niemann. In a charming talk packed with witty, whimsical drawings, Niemann takes us on a hilarious visual tour that shows how artists tap into our...

Even though doctors have been using general anesthesia for nearly 200 years, they haven’t really understood the details of how it temporarily shuts down your brain — until now.

In 2007, Hanny van Arkel noticed a blue blob next to a galaxy. Eight years later, scientists are still trying to figure out how it got there.

Your brain is lying to you about what you see-- find out why in this Quick Question!

Today, we're going to combine the artificial neuron we created last week into an artificial neural network. Artificial neural networks are better than other methods for more complicated tasks like image recognition, and the key to their...

We've been trying to count the galaxies in the universe since the mid '90s, but our estimates change as our tools improve. So what does our current estimate really mean?

The origins of the cameras we use today were invented in the 19th century. Or were they? A millenia before, Arab scientist Alhazen was using the camera obscura to duplicate images, with Leonardo da Vinci following suit 500 years later...

Sometimes the most intimidating part of making a movie is that little box of concentrated technology called "The Camera." But, FEAR NOT! In this episode of Crash Course Film Production, Lily helps us dissect the basics of modern movie...

Thinking startup? David S. Rose's rapid-fire TED U talk on pitching to a venture capitalist tells you the 10 things you need to know about yourself -- and prove to a VC -- before you fire up your slideshow.

This video is about a multistable perceptual illusion, similar to the hollow face illusion, whereby maps or aerial or satellite photos look upside down/inside out, ie, concave (valley) parts look convex and convex...

The discovery of the structure of DNA was one of the most important scientific achievements in human history. The now-famous double helix is almost synonymous with Watson and Crick, two of the scientists who won the Nobel prize for...

Hatshepsut was a female pharaoh during the New Kingdom in Egypt. Twenty years after her death, somebody smashed her statues, took a chisel and attempted to erase the pharaoh's name and image from history. But who did it? And why? Kate...

An unnoticed industry worth two trillion dollars a year is influencing almost every carbon emission. Sustainability solution seeker Solitaire Townsend calls this sector the "X industry" (where "X" stands for influence), and it includes...

What if invisibility wasn't just the stuff of epic comic book stories? Is it scientifically possible to be invisible? In this series, Joy Lin tackles six superpowers and reveals just how scientifically realistic they can be to us mere...

You may have had an ultrasound before, and wondered what that gel does. Well, that weird alien goop has a purpose, and it has to do with being like our weird human skin.

Hundreds of meters below the surface of the ocean, Laura Robinson probes the steep slopes of massive undersea mountains. She's on the hunt for thousand-year-old corals that she can test in a nuclear reactor to discover how the ocean...

What if we could harness the sticking powers of sea creatures like mussels, oysters and barnacles, which refuse to budge even on wet, stormy coastlines? Dive into the wonderful world of animals that make their own glue and cement with...

Chances are, when you hear the phrase "Special Effects," you may have images pop into your mind. The Hulk smashing a city, a lightsaber fight, or maybe an alien world. But effects can be much more subtle and have been around really since...

Please Note: This episode contains post-mortem photographs: those of people taken after their death. If you would prefer not to see those images, please feel welcome to look away from the screen at 0:17 to 0:27 and listen...