SciShow
The 5,000-Year-Old Mystery of Ancient Egyptian Perfume
The ancient Egyptians were masters of embalming the dead, but they left no record of the ingredients in their balms and perfumes. Luckily, modern chemistry is unlocking those secrets. And it's telling us a lot more about their culture...
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Everyone Was Wrong About Avocados - Including Us
If you’re a fan of avocados, you might have heard that they only exist thanks to prehistoric creatures called giant ground sloths. In fact, you’ve probably heard that from us. But as it turns out, the real story is way more complicated -...
SciShow
What Color Was the Big Bang?
If you could survive a trip to the very first moments of reality as we know it, what color would you see?
SciShow
Keep Calm And Recover From Surgery Faster
Can keeping calm before a surgery reduce negative outcomes? More than one study says "Yes."
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A Vaccine That Makes Your Immune System ... Forget?
Vaccines for covid or the flu teach your immune system to remember a threat so that it responds when that threat shows up. Some researchers want to delete immune memories instead, because those aberrant memories are the cause of...
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Are Your New Memories Replacing Your Old Ones?
Research suggests there's a reason you can't remember much from your childhood: new memories are replacing the old ones.
SciShow
These Are The Coolest Fossils From 2023
It's that time of year where we round up all our favorite science discoveries of the year, and today, we're talking fossils. From a wild mosasaur with screwdriver teeth, to glittery gold fossils, and even a mammal-versus-reptile fight to...
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The Moon is Rusting. It's the Earth's Fault.
The Moon is typically 380,000-ish kilometers from the Earth, so it doesn't seem like they have that much of a direct influence on one another. However, the presence of hematite on the lunar surface suggests our planet is causing the Moon...
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This Light is a Different Kind of Invisible
Dark matter's most famous trait is its inability to interact with light, the particle version of which we call "photons". But in their attempts to figure out exactly what dark matter is, some scientists have proposed "dark photons".
SciShow
The Biggest and Brightest Space News of 2023
It's that time of year where we reflect on the events of 2023 - and if you're like us, you're thinking about all the coolest space-y finds of the year. So here's the brightest, faintest, and most magnetic stuff we saw in space this year!
SciShow
The Ocean's Most Important Crystal
When we think of the ocean and what's in it, you probably think of stuff like fish, or salt, or seaweed. But there's a crystal that is so vital to marine life that they take dissolved materials in that salty water and build it...
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The Infamous, Brain-Bending Birthday Problem
There's a rather famous problem in math of probability called the Birthday Paradox. Let's get into how it works, and how creative uses of this hypothetical problem have real-world applications!
SciShow
We May Be Able To Grow Human Organs In Animals. Should We?
Seventeen people in the US die /every day/ waiting for an organ transplant, usually a kidney. One approach is to grow extra kidneys in pigs, an idea known as xenotransplantation. We'll look at two recent milestones, as well as the...
SciShow
Are Sharks Really Older Than the North Star?
If you've spent enough time on the internet, you may have stumbled upon the fact that sharks are older than Polaris, aka the North Star. But are they really? It turns out the truth is a little more complicated.
SciShow
The Science of Mouth Taping
Have you heard about this technique called mouth taping, and the claims it can cure everything from asthma to bad breath? We're here to cover what science and peer-reviewed research actually has to say about it.
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Can We Make A Vaccine Against Smoking?
We've all heard of a flu shot or a COVID vaccine, but there's a whole bunch of other health issues that researchers think we can use vaccines to prevent. From high cholesterol to substance abuse, researchers want our immune systems to...
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Ticks Can Spread An Allergy To… Red Meat?
It's been about ten years since scientists categorized alpha-gal syndrome, AKA the red meat allergy spread by ticks. But while researchers know more about it, there's a chance that doctors don't.
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Does Antimatter Fall?
In September 2023, a group of scientists from CERN published the first results from the ALPHA-g experiment, which seeks to figure out how antimatter responds to the force of gravity. Does it fall like regular matter? Does it not interact...
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This Simple Test Could Detect Half of All Cancers
Cancer is a complicated disease, and there's no simple blood test for early detection and screening to spot cancer in general. That might be changing thanks to LINE-1, a retrotransposon gene that doesn't do anything.
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What Makes This Plant Hair So Deadly?
You may be familiar with plants that have hair, like fuzzy peaches. But these plant take their 'dos to the next level, because their hairs are deadly.
SciShow
Can a Plug-In Really Improve Your Cat's Behavior?
Have you ever seen cat pheromones, sometimes branded as Feliway, that promise to address problem behaviors like cat scratching, fighting, and stress? These products are based on real science. But do they work?
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Wolves Have Taken Over a Marine Ecosystem
Wolves are amazing hunters, so they tend to be apex predators wherever you find them...including one region in Alaska where these land-based predators sit atop a marine food web.
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Evolution Can't Explain Your Grandma
There's a really interesting idea in anthropology called the grandmother hypothesis, that basically says the reason we have grandmas has to do with what makes us unique as a species. But there's a huge problem with the idea that it's...
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The World’s Strongest Acid Might be Gentle Enough to Eat
Hearing the word "superacid" may evoke memories of that scene from Breaking Bad, but perhaps counterintuitively, the strongest acid on Earth wouldn't be able to destroy your bathroom.