Ah, coffee – humanity’s beloved brew. It’s the ultimate “morning fuel,” a little cup of joy, and, for some of us, an unsolicited escort to the bathroom. But why coffee makes you poop? Is it just a caffeinated mystery, or is there science behind coffee’s powerful pull on our plumbing? Let’s take a look under […]
Who will be first to return humans to the lunar surface? Merlin74 / Shutterstock Jacco van Loon, Keele University Will the next human to walk on the Moon speak English or Mandarin? In all, 12 Americans landed on the lunar surface between 1969 and 1972. Now, both the US and China are preparing to send […]
Tom F.A Watts, Royal Holloway University of London October 26, 2024 marks the 40th anniversary of director James Cameron’s science fiction classic, The Terminator – a film that popularised society’s fear of machines that can’t be reasoned with, and that “absolutely will not stop … until you are dead”, as one character memorably puts it. […]
Imagine growing up believing trees are nature’s perfect little oxygen factories, silently working away to purify the air for us—kind of like Earth’s unpaid interns. But then one day, a dude named Andrew, a subscriber of PBS’s Reactions Youtube channel and an employee at an unmentioned city engineering department, crashes your tree-hugging dreams with a […]
Ever wonder what those flashes of light and colors are when you rub your eyes or glance at a light source? Back in the 1600s, Isaac Newton was just as curious. He conducted experiments to better understand these visual illusions, now known as afterimages. These glowing patterns appear when your eyes are exposed to bright […]
The surface of Europa – one of Jupiter’s moons – is a thick layer of solid ice. NASA/JPL-Caltech/SETI Institute, CC BY-SA Mike Sori, Purdue University On Oct. 14, 2024, NASA launched a robotic spacecraft named Europa Clipper to Jupiter’s moons. Clipper will reach the ice-covered Jovian moon Europa in 2030 and spend several years collecting […]
Have you ever thought you understood color? Well, think again! In the latest video from the Reactions YouTube channel, Alex Dainis, Ph.D., a brilliant science communicator with a PhD in genetics, breaks down the misconceptions surrounding color perception that you’ve likely encountered before. Most videos simplify the concept by stating that light hits an object, […]
Artificial neural networks mimic human brains, but the technology has its roots in physics. Thom Leach/Science Photo Library via Getty Images Ambuj Tewari, University of Michigan If your jaw dropped as you watched the latest AI-generated video, your bank balance was saved from criminals by a fraud detection system, or your day was made a […]