In May of 1945 the Third Reich was in chaos. Adolf Hitler was dead and German surrender was imminent. But while World War II was almost over, a new war was brewing. And the US was eager to recruit the smartest minds in Germany before the...

Typically, with any piece of technology, you pump one unit of energy in and you get about one out. That’s just the first law of thermodynamics: energy has to be conserved. But there’s a piece of technology called a heat pump, where for...

Each year, approximately 20 million people receive a cancer diagnosis. At that time, a patient usually learns their cancer’s stage, which is typically a number ranging from one to four. While staging is designed, in part, to help...

In 1970, neurosurgeon Robert White and his team carted two monkeys into an operating room to conduct an ambitious experiment. The objective was to connect the head of Monkey A to the body of Monkey B, in what he considered a whole-body...

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...

The world is always abuzz with sounds, many of which human ears simply can’t hear. However, other species have extraordinary adaptations that grant them access to realms of sonic extremes. And some of them don’t even have ears— at least,...

Magnets - how DO they work? We've got the answer for you, plus a bunch of weird fun magnet facts - where they got their names, why hitting some stuff with a hammer can turn it into magnets, and even why we feed magnets to cows, on purpose.

Agriculture fundamentally changed the way humans live — but at a cost, using up huge tracts of land and wreaking havoc on the environment, even as millions still go hungry. Entrepreneur and investor David Friedberg paints a picture of...

The way we raise animals is destructive to humans, animals and the environment, says cardiologist and entrepreneur Uma Valeti. He presents a solution that doesn't require you to give up your favorite protein-packed meals: cultivated...

Would you swallow a micro-robot? In a gutsy demo, physician Vivek Kumbhari navigates Pillbot, a wireless, disposable robot swallowed onstage by engineer Alex Luebke, modeling how this technology can swiftly provide direct visualization...

Biomedical researcher Sonia Vallabh's life was turned upside down when she learned she had the genetic mutation for a rare and fatal illness, prion disease, that could strike at any time. Thirteen years later, her search for a cure has...

Can AI help us answer life's biggest questions? In this visionary conversation, Google DeepMind cofounder and CEO Demis Hassabis delves into the history and incredible capabilities of AI with head of TED Chris Anderson. Hassabis explains...

Here's a conundrum: the same aerosol pollutants that harm human health also help cool the climate, says atmospheric scientist Sarah J. Doherty. Is there a way to clean up the air without warming the planet? Exploring the unintended...

The convergence of AI and robotics will unlock a wonderful new world of possibilities in everyday life, says robotics and AI pioneer Daniela Rus. Diving into the way machines think, she reveals how "liquid networks" — a revolutionary...

What if you could transform your anxiety into something you can actually use during your work day? Neuroscientist Wendy Suzuki shares two evidence-based activities -- breathing and movement -- that can soothe your nervous system and fuel...

There are more than 2,000 firefly species, found on every continent except for Antarctica — an astonishing diversity of movement and light. Firefly scientist Wan Faridah Akmal Jusoh explores the mysteries of these little beetles that...

If you look at a copy of the periodic table, you might notice that basically every element after lead is labelled as radioactive. And the vast majority of those elements wind up decaying into some version of lead eventually. But why is...

It feels like for an animal, having one's butt fall off would be pretty bad. But apparently that's not always the worst thing to happen, at least not for these specific animals.

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.

January babies, rejoice! This month's SciShow Rocks Box video is the story of garnets, and how these fabulous gemstones help us solve geological mysteries, from the Italian Alps to the Himalayas.

Sure, you can point to the geographic north pole on a globe. But getting there, even with fancy equipment like GPS, isn't so straightforward. So scientists are looking into a navigation tool some animals use naturally.

Do new traits in evolution happen slowly, or all at once? Two new studies in the journal Science may finally help us solve this mystery.

Many people picture the Arctic as a pristine icy wilderness. But when it comes to microplastics, it's one of the most polluted places on Eart

There's an eclipse coming up in April of 2024! You'd think it takes a lot of modern technology for us to know about it, but it turns out that humans have been able to predict eclipses for nearly three thousand years. And we've been...