A Moment of Science

Escape From A Frog's Stomach

25 Nov 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In 2020 a Japanese biologist reported discovering a species of aquatic beetle that can actively escape alive from the stomach of a pond frog. It doesn...

Vaccine Skeptics Think Differently

24 Nov 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Despite having almost 1,300 measles cases in 2019 after measles was declared eradicated from the U.S. in 2000, some people are still hesitant to vacci...

The Wonderful World Inside Lava Caves

23 Nov 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Do you live near a dormant volcano? You might have a weird wonderland right beneath your feet.

Lava Caves Part 1

20 Nov 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In Hawaii, there's a lava cave named Kazumura that's over 40 miles long, the largest in the world. When a volcano erupts, it sends lava rivers rushing...

Desert Ants Use Magnetic Field To Get Home

19 Nov 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Desert ants spend the first four weeks of their lives in their underground nest. They keep themselves busy by digging tunnels, building chambers, and ...

What Happens To Nuclear Waste?

18 Nov 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Today, 440 nuclear reactors are operating in 30 countries worldwide. The energy generated by these plants provides 10 percent of the world’s electri...

Denman Glacier: Assessing The Threat

17 Nov 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Melting glaciers in West Antarctica might collapse due to the effects of human-caused global climate change, but there are also risks in Antarctica's ...

Mangrove Forests and Flood Protection

16 Nov 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Mangrove forests are beautiful all on their own, but they also provide flood protection. The roots of the trees hold in sediment, which prevents erosi...

Mal de Debarquement Syndrome

13 Nov 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Have you ever had the experience of being on a boat all day, and then later feeling like you were swaying or rocking even though you were no longer on...

Bumblebees and Flowering Plants

12 Nov 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Scientists think that bumblebees can speed up flowering in plants. They go the idea when doing a different experiment and noticing bumblebees using th...

The Asteroid Did It: A Murder Mystery

11 Nov 2020

Contributed by Lukas

The extinction at the end of the Cretaceous period is Earth's greatest murder mystery. 66 million years ago, something killed about 75 percent of all ...

Coyotes May Soon Enter South America

10 Nov 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Historically, coyotes roamed a broad expanse, as far east as the Mississippi and as far west as the Pacific, north into Canada and south into Mexico, ...

Warm Antarctic Waters

09 Nov 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Scientists are carefully monitoring the west Antarctic ice sheet. It's melting, and has been responsible for about four percent of the global rise in ...

A Brain Area That Shuts Off Pain

09 Nov 2020

Contributed by Lukas

During WWII, doctors noticed severely injured soldiers didn't need pain medication. Biomedical researchers have known for some time that the brain has...

Isolation and Inflammation

06 Nov 2020

Contributed by Lukas

An illness all by itself is unpleasant, but the isolation we experience while recovering is also bad for our health. There's research showing that soc...

Reindeer Could Save The Permafrost

05 Nov 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Reindeer herds may be saving thawing permafrost, which can release greenhouse gases stored in it and speed up climate change.

Pain Relieving Profanity

04 Nov 2020

Contributed by Lukas

When you stub your toe or hit your head, sometimes a swear word will slip out. Some researchers argue that this is a kind of stress-reduced analgesia,...

Turtle Moms And Their Decoy Nests

02 Nov 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Every summer, scores of trained volunteers scan coastal beaches, looking for sea turtle nests. When found, the nests are marked and watched, preventin...

The "Ghost" Hominin

30 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

It's interesting that modern anthropologists can do more than just study fossil bones and teeth. Ancient remains sometimes contain surviving DNA, and ...

Upside-Down Grasshoppers

29 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Have you ever wondered how bugs handle being upside down for so long? It's a puzzling question, especially since insects don't have a closed circulato...

Insect Flours

28 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Over the next few decades, bread may become an important protein source for many consumers, and animal protein alone won’t be able to meet the deman...

Will Rising Carbon Dioxide Levels Harm Our Ability To Think?

27 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

According to a study published by American researchers in 2020, unless we change current practices, by the end of this century there will be more than...

Volcanic Eruptions And Rainfall

26 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Scientists have noticed that global precipitation tends to drop after a volcanic eruption, but they haven't known all the factors that can influence t...

Beluga Whales Are Just Like Us

23 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Beluga whales have complex social networks, where support structures and cooperation extend beyond the nuclear family. Beluga communities often have a...

What Events Make Us Really Happy?

22 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

A research team did a study on how major life events affect our wellbeing, using a sample of 14,000 Australians who had participated in a survey that ...

Saber-Toothed Tigers Were Really, Really Big

21 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Maine Coons seem huge for domesticated cats. But Smilodon populator is the biggest species of one of the biggest cats of all time: the saber-toothed t...

Methane, The Other Greenhouse Gas

20 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Greenhouse gases trap the sun’s heat in a planet’s atmosphere. Carbon dioxide is the most familiar example The release of carbon dioxide by burnin...

Seductive Details And Learning

19 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Seductive details are attention catching details that make a lesson or presentation more interesting but aren't relevant to the content. Even though t...

Plastic Dust Is Covering Our National Parks

16 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

According to a recent study, our national parks are being coated in plastic dust. Most of it is from around the world, but a lot of it originates in n...

Paranoia

15 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In times of unexpected uncertainty, people may be more prone to paranoia. For instance, during the current global pandemic, many people have been thro...

Shedding Microfibers

14 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

It's hard to keep our planet pollution-free. Even our clothes are contaminating the planet with all the microfibers they release. New research shows t...

Dogs' Noses Can Seek Out Heat

13 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Did you know that a dog's nose can be tens of thousands of times more sensitive than ours? A recent study even suggests that dogs' noses can actually ...

Cutting The Salt But Keeping The Flavor

12 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Pretzels, potato chips, and popcorn are all covered in it. It's baked into our bread and mixed into our butter. It snows down on our fies and even our...

Do Carnivores Care About Us?

09 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

While you’re out in nature, do you ever wonder if your presence changes the way animals interact with each other? Well, in 2018 researchers in Calif...

Canines Conquer The East

08 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Eastern wolves and coyotes have been interbreeding more frequently over the past several hundred years, and now their hybrids are widespread from the ...

The Trees That Farm Their Own Drought Tolerance

07 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

With climate change, stronger droughts are challenging the world's forests, meaning species' niches, or environmental requirements, aren't matching up...

Speaking With Tongues

06 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Today, we're talking about talking, and parrots, which can learn to talk, and is why studying the way parrots vocalize can help scientists better unde...

Your Skin's Thermometer

05 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

What skin temperature feels comfortable to you? I'm not talking about air temperature, I'm talking about the temperature of your skin itself, under yo...

Of Figs And Fig Wasps

02 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Figs have their thousands of individual flowers folded up inside them, so they can't rely on bees or wind to pollinate them with a male fig's pollen. ...

Black Tongues And Stomach Aches

01 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Sometimes, when people get stomach aches they are alarmed to find that their tongue has turned black. Fortunately for them, it isn't a life threatenin...

Murphy's Toast

30 Sep 2020

Contributed by Lukas

If you're eating toast, and you accidentally bump it to the floor, it seems more likely to land buttered side down.  This is one of the most common f...

Growing Plants Indoors

29 Sep 2020

Contributed by Lukas

It can be hard to grow plants indoors, especially in a room without a lot of sunlight. Sometimes it's just a matter of choosing the right plant, thoug...

Cockroach Milk

28 Sep 2020

Contributed by Lukas

A cockroach species in Hawaii called the Pacific beetle cockroach can actually give milk. This isn't the only thing this cockroach has in common with ...

Airplane Contrails

25 Sep 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Have you ever seen a perfectly cloudless sky?  Cloudless--that is--except for two or three long white lines smeared across the perfect blue sky by ai...

The "Frankenstein" Galaxy

23 Sep 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Today's Moment of Science is about a galaxy called UGC 1382. For a long time, scientists thought it was a fairly small, run-of-the mill galaxy, but th...

How Cold Does It Feel?

22 Sep 2020

Contributed by Lukas

If you're lucky enough to live where it's sometimes windy and cold, you've probably heard your weatherperson give out two temperatures:  the actual t...

Trees Know When Something's Eating Them

21 Sep 2020

Contributed by Lukas

German scientists studying young beeches and maples knew plants responded to predation, but they wanted to know if plants could tell the difference be...

Sunrise, Sunset

18 Sep 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Why does the sunset take more time than the sunrise? It takes much less time for the sun to light up the sky at dawn than it does for all the light to...

Parenting Styles And Bullying

17 Sep 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Why do some kids become bullies or the victims of bullies? How closely is this linked to how their parents raised them?

Ancient Asteroid Impact

10 Sep 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Scientists have discovered evidence of another ancient asteroid impact, but not the one that killed the dinosaurs. This asteroid is much, much older t...

Skinny Diabetes

09 Sep 2020

Contributed by Lukas

A lot of doctors have been stumped by slim patients showing signs of high blood pressure, high cholesterol and Type 2 diabetes. They'd see or hear abo...

The Galactic Positioning System

08 Sep 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In 1967 a team of astronomers in Great Britain thought they had found extraterrestrial intelligence. They discovered radio sources in deep space that ...

Meet Lichen's Secret Third Partner, Yeast

03 Sep 2020

Contributed by Lukas

If I asked you what lichen was, you might say that it's a symbiotic organism that's made up of fungus joined with algae or cyanobacteria. This is what...

The Origin Story Of Earth's Oldest Rock

02 Sep 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Scientists have found zircon crystals in Australia that are over 4 billion years old. Since the Earth is just over 4 and a half billion years old, tho...

The Secrets Of Sandpaper

01 Sep 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Sandpaper isn't made of ordinary sand, it's made of abrasive minerals like aluminum oxide or garnet that are glued onto a paper backing.

Whollydooleya tomnpatrichorum: A Newly Identified Flesh-Eating Marsupial

31 Aug 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Scientists in Australia identified a new extinct marsupial using a fossil of its molar tooth they found in a newly discovered fossil site in remote Qu...

The Milky Way Is More Than A Candy Bar

28 Aug 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Did you know that a third of the people living on Earth can't see the Milky Way at night? More than 80 percent of North Americans and 60 percent of Eu...

The Hairy Truth

27 Aug 2020

Contributed by Lukas

The main difference between hair and fur is where it grows, not what it's made of. Hair length is a trait that's specific both to you as an individual...

Does Trampling Harm Grass?

26 Aug 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Parking your car on your lawn might look strange, but it doesn't harm your grass. The part of the grass that's responsible for new growth is at the ba...

Elephant Grandmothers Equal More Elephant Calves

25 Aug 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Multigenerations groups aren't common in zoos, but they're a really good idea for elephants. A recent study showed how important grandmother elephants...

Lost Underwater City Not A City At All

24 Aug 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In shallow water off the Greek island Zakynthos there is what could be the ruins of an old Greek or Roman city. When it was discovered, people thought...

Fish Can Recognize Human Faces

21 Aug 2020

Contributed by Lukas

How do people recognize faces? Is it a special ability that relies on custom circuitry in the human brain? Or, do we learn it with the same brain circ...

King Tut's Space Dagger

20 Aug 2020

Contributed by Lukas

King Tutankhamen of Egypt has fascinated people ever since archeologist Howard Carter discovered his splendid tomb in 1922. He ruled ancient Egypt as ...

Red Planet With A Ring

19 Aug 2020

Contributed by Lukas

It might sound odd, but scientists think Mars is going to have a ring around it in tens of millions of years. They're predicting that one of Mars' moo...

Why Women Live Longer Than Men

18 Aug 2020

Contributed by Lukas

According to lots of evidence, women do live longer than men, on average. In fact, humans are the only species for which this appears to be true under...

Kids And Money

17 Aug 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Money is known to alter behavior, for better and for worse. Some experiments have found that even just handling money can change the behavior of kids ...

Be Generous, Or Else

14 Aug 2020

Contributed by Lukas

According to scientists, belief in a divine god makes people more generous.

Bean Yeasts Create Flavor

13 Aug 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Coffee and cacao beans are fermented. Similar to wine, the flavor of the beans is determined by the type of yeasts and microorganisms present.

Seeing Motion And Avoiding Obstacles

12 Aug 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Robotic aerial vehicles designed for functions such as search and rescue need ways to avoid crashing into trees, buildings and walls. There's a lot th...

Dogs Show Evidence Of Empathy

11 Aug 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Dogs always seem to know how to improve our mood. It's almost as if they can tell exactly what we're feeling.

Tsunamis And The Oceans Of Mars

10 Aug 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Although the Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity found geological evidence that ancient Mars had standing liquid water a long time ago, scientists are ...

How Sign Languages Develop

07 Aug 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Researchers think that the first steps in the creation of a sign language likely resemble a game of charades. According to one study, it only takes fi...

City Moths Evolve To Avoid City Lights

06 Aug 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Did you know that moths are a lot less attracted to artificial light than they used to be? Huge numbers of moths die from flying toward artificial lig...

Jupiter's X-ray Aurora

05 Aug 2020

Contributed by Lukas

A planet has to have a magnetic field to make aurora lights. The sun is always sending out particles called the solar wind. That wind frequently incre...

Fungi Help Trees Share Carbon

04 Aug 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Once you know something about forests, it's easy to think of trees as competitive: they have to battle it out with each other for space, sunlight, wat...

Were Unicorns Real?

03 Aug 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Today's Moment of Science is about unicorns. These creatures may be legendary, but there is growing evidence that the legend may have been inspired by...

Dinosaur Malaria

31 Jul 2020

Contributed by Lukas

There are hundreds of millions of malaria cases worldwide every year. It's caused by a protozoan called Plasmodium and is spread by anopheline mosquit...

A More Nutritious Cassava Plant

30 Jul 2020

Contributed by Lukas

If you live in the United States, you probably haven't given a lot of thought to vitamin B6. Our bodies can't produce it, but it's in a lot of staple ...

The Orchid That Smells Like People

29 Jul 2020

Contributed by Lukas

It might sound strange, but some orchids smell like people. Others smell like rotting meat or fish to attract pollinators.

Really Tiny Thermometers

28 Jul 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Researchers at the University of Montreal have created a programmable thermometer made from DNA. It's 20,000 times smaller than the width of a human h...

Ant Antennae: Two-Way Communication

27 Jul 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Once one ant finds food, it leaves a pheromone scent trail so others can find the way with their antennae. Ant antennae not only pick up information, ...

Ancient Climate Records

23 Jul 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Sophisticated digital climate models help scientists measure the effects of carbon dioxide on the warming and cooling of the planet. Water scientists ...

The Magnetic Field And Life On Earth

22 Jul 2020

Contributed by Lukas

The Earth needed a number of things to become habitable. First of all, it needed to be close to a star, but not too close. It also needed water, a roc...

The Radical Radial Symmetry Of Moon Jellyfish

21 Jul 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Imagine you're a moon jellyfish for a second. Now imagine suddenly finding yourself missing one of your arms. As a jellysih missing an arm, what would...

Is ET Hiding?

20 Jul 2020

Contributed by Lukas

We are closer than ever to finding inhabited worlds. When an alien planet passes in front of its star, an event that's called a transit, there is a sm...

When To Copy Your Neighbors

17 Jul 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Have you ever planted a garden because your neighbor's garden was growing well? This kind of imitative behavior was the inspiration behind a 2013 stud...

Remembrance Of Things Past For Babies

16 Jul 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Most people say their earliest memory is from around the age of three, which led researchers to believe that children start forming long-term memories...

A New Mouth For Every Meal

15 Jul 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Outside of Greek mythology, hydras actually exist in the real world, although you can't see them without a microscope, otherwise it just looks like a ...

Bacterial Hooks

14 Jul 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Many women get a urinary tract infection at some point, and they are quite painful. The infection is caused by bacteria that enter the body through th...

A New Ninth Planet

13 Jul 2020

Contributed by Lukas

We're going to have a solar system with nine planets, and it has nothing to do with Pluto. Caltech researchers have evidence of another more normal-si...

Fish Brains Have An Alert System

10 Jul 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Did you know that your brain has an alerting system? There is a structure in the brain that combines information from all of the senses, and detects i...

Recounting Our Bacteria: Fewer Than We Thought

09 Jul 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In the last few decades, scientists have begun to understand the importance of bacteria that live in and on our bodies. The accepted estimate has been...

Are Dragons Real?

08 Jul 2020

Contributed by Lukas

On today's Moment of Science, we're going to talk about dragons. This might seem like an inappropriate topic for a science program, but there are stor...

Do Sharks Navigate By Smell?

07 Jul 2020

Contributed by Lukas

The deep ocean is a confusing place to navigate. There are almost no visual landmarks, and water currents can carry an animal off course. Yet many spe...

Why We Become Enraged

06 Jul 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Sometimes when we're driving, we can become so enraged we can't really explain why. This is because our brains evolved to be extremely aware of threat...

Brains Are The Same

03 Jul 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Men and women have some obvious biological differences. But what about the brain? Are there such things as "female brains" and "male brains."

The Green Door

02 Jul 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Here's a simple demonstration you can do with cool implications. Find a large object that is brightly colored, like a green door. Stand with that door...

Dogs Recognize Their Own Species

01 Jul 2020

Contributed by Lukas

French scientists recently tested dogs to see if they could recognize the faces of other dogs on a computer screen. This might not sound that difficul...

Camouflage Is Not Infallible

30 Jun 2020

Contributed by Lukas

There are a few different types of camouflage in the natural world. There's disruptive coloration, like stripes or spots that break up your form again...

My Bacteria Are Full

29 Jun 2020

Contributed by Lukas

We've been hearing a lot about the importance of gut bacteria to our health. Now it turns out that bacteria also have a say in how and when we eat.