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Inside the Lab That Invented the COVID-19 Vaccine
Here we are, just a year after the first news of the coronavirus we now call SARS-CoV-2 and the global pandemic known as COVID-19… and scientists have already developed more than one safe & effective vaccine. How did they do that so...
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I Can't Believe We're Making Another COVID Video
I Can't Believe We're Making Another COVID Video
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How To Go Faster Than Light Speed (Seriously…)
Nothing can travel faster than light — in a vacuum. But when light slows down, sometimes matter can blaze past that speed limit, creating a stunning glow called Cherenkov radiation. We can see this glow in a nuclear reactor as...
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The Universe in a Glass of Wine (Richard Feynman Remixed)
A poet once said, "The whole universe is in a glass of wine." We will probably never know in what sense he said that, for poets do not write to be understood. But it is true that if we look in glass of wine closely enough we see the...
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The Reason COVID-19 Is Our Perfect Enemy (and Why We’ll Beat It)
SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19 are nasty enemies. Invisible, mysterious, and deadly, they have spread around the world and caused much of humanity to hide away. Germs like these only succeed and spread because of our social evolution, and our...
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The Essentials of Energy
The world of energy is a confusing place. What's better, nuclear or solar? What's the difference between fluorescent bulbs and LEDs? What's the difference between energy and power? And what the heck is a kilowatt-hour?!
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Is Your Eye Color Real?
The eyes are often the first thing we see when we look at someone. And when you look at them up close, everyone’s eye color is a kaleidoscope of shapes and hues. How does eye color work? The answer involves some very cool physics, and...
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Is There Life on Earth?
If we lived light years from Earth, how would we know there’s life here? Let’s take a look at the search for extraterrestrial life on habitable exoplanets, and discover what biosignatures would show someone else that we’re here.
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How To See Colors That Aren't Real
What color is a banana? Duh, it’s yellow. But what is yellow? Now that you mention it, how do we see color in the first place? That’s the series of questions that led me to making this video. It started simple and took me down a rabbit...
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How To See a Black Hole with a Planet-Sized Telescope | STELLAR
It took about a century for black holes to go from impossible, to theoretical, to real. And it was just this year, in 2019, when we finally saw the first picture of a black hole! But how to you take a photo of something so massively...
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The Dark Origins of the Scientific Method
500 years before the Scientific Revolution, the mathematician Al-Hassan Ibn al-Haytham spent hours in a dark room studying the light that filtered in. Not only did he revolutionize how we literally see the world, he pioneered the...
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Humans Are Smart. Why Are Babies So Dumb?
The first thing a baby giraffe experiences after being born is a 2 meter fall straight down to the ground. But within an hour, it’s standing, walking, and nursing on its own. And a blue whale calf, after nearly a year growing inside mom,...
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Why No One Can Agree What’s REALLY the Tallest Mountain
What's the tallest mountain on Earth? It might seem like an easy question to answer, but in reality it's one that brings up more NEW questions than answers. It turns out that the way we measure mountains rests on a lot of approximations,...
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Why Dung Beetles Stare At the Stars | IN OUR NATURE
Seemingly distant ecosystems, even half a world apart, are connected in surprising ways. In this special limited series, Emily Graslie and Trace Dominguez join me as we explore the universal rules of life that tie together Earth’s living...
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The TRUE Story of Ben Franklin & His Kite
You’ve probably heard of Ben Franklin and the kite. But do you know the TRUE story of how his famous experiment changed the world? Here’s the tale of how one person’s quest for scientific knowledge altered the direction of history.
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These Death-Eating Scavengers Are Real Life-Savers | IN OUR NATURE
Seemingly distant ecosystems, even half a world apart, are connected in surprising ways. In this special limited series, Emily Graslie and Trace Dominguez join me as we explore the universal rules of life that tie together Earth’s living...
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How Every Movie & Video Game Tricks Your Brain
Movies. Video games. YouTube videos. All of them work because we accidentally figured out a way to fool your brain’s visual processing system, and you don’t even know it’s happening. In this video, I talk to neuroscientist David...
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Why the Plastic Pollution Problem Is So Much Worse Than You Think
There’s been a lot of talk on YouTube lately about ocean plastic pollution and #TeamSeas. But there hasn’t been enough talk about the *ridiculously unthinkable scale of the ocean plastic pollution problem* or how it intersects with other...
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What's The Most Successful Species on Earth?
There are now more than 7 billion human beings on Earth, and that got me wondering: How successful are we compared to other species? I take a look at out how our numbers stack up to some other domains of life. It turns out that biomass,...
Curated Video
The Surprising Species That Everything Else Depends On | IN OUR NATURE
Seemingly distant ecosystems, even half a world apart, are connected in surprising ways. In this special limited series, Emily Graslie and Trace Dominguez join me as we explore the universal rules of life that tie together Earth’s living...
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The Mystery of Earth's Disappearing Giants | IN OUR NATURE
Seemingly distant ecosystems, even half a world apart, are connected in surprising ways. In this special limited series, Emily Graslie and Trace Dominguez join me as we explore the universal rules of life that tie together Earth’s living...
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Why You Can’t Smell Yourself (and Other Ways Your Senses Lie to You)
There is an absolutely weird, but surprisingly common phenomenon called sensory adaptation that you experience every day in countless ways without even realizing it. Without this very strange phenomenon, you would be lost, overwhelmed,...