A Moment of Science
Episodes
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.
How Insects Drink
26 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Insects need water. How they get their water depends a lot on their diets. Herbivorous insects get most of their water from their food because plants ...
Evolving Better Eyes
26 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Although the eye is complicated, biologists still have a good understanding of how it evolved. In modern animals, they have found eyes of all differen...
Tardigrades: Stranger Than They Appear
25 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Tardigrades are little animals that can survive dehydration, radiation, and survive in outer space without a space suit. As strange as all of the abov...
Recognizing Distant Relatives
23 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In 2015, a team of European biologists published evidence that Siberian jays can distinguish relatives they've never seen before.
Spiteful Monkeys
22 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
We humans may share around 98% of our DNA with chimpanzees and other simians, but we're still pretty different. After all, we have smart phones, and m...
Think Like A Penguin
19 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
A "niche" is an organism's special "slot" in an ecosystem that allows it to co-exist with other species. It's defined by the resources it needs to sur...
Driving A Cockroach
18 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Scientists recently found a way to drive a cockroach the way you might drive a car. They put electrodes in its brain, and by stimulating it in the rig...
Drinking And Smoking
17 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Most alcoholics smoke at about three times the rate in the general population. But a study suggested that what you're dealing with isn't just behavior...
Word Up, Brain
16 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
On today's Moment of Science we're going to perform a little experiment in order to learn a little bit about the motor cortex--a strip of tissue runni...
Stink Bugs Are Not All Bad
15 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
It isn't uncommon for people to hate stink bugs, but not all stink bugs are bad. Some are beneficial, like spined soldier bugs. They are predators tha...
UFO Attack!
12 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In 1969 two airliners, plus the pilot of an Air National Guard fighter plane, report being harassed by a team of UFOs.
Why Elephants Don't Get Cancer
08 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Scientists at the University of Utah and at Arizona State studied the elephant genome and found that they have up to 40 extra copies of genes that cod...
Mona Lisa's Mysterious Smile
05 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Harvard neuroscientist Margaret Livingstone is pretty sure she's solved the puzzle of the Mona Lisa's changing smile. Presuming nothing, Livingstone r...
How Full Is That Glass?
04 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Psychologist Jean Piaget claimed that children overestimate the volume of vertical dimensions, but that as their brains mature, they develop the capac...
Fermi's Paradox Part Two
03 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
According to reasonable estimates of how many stars have planets, how many planets may be suitable for the evolution of organisms, and so on, our Milk...
Fermi's Paradox
02 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Probability would lead us to believe that extraterrestrial life does exist, so why have we not found any?
Babies and Bacteria
01 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Fetuses have some bacteria while still in the womb, but during birth they're coated with microbes as they travel down the birth canal, including bacte...
The Cyclopean Eye
27 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Since we have two eyes, why is it that we don't see two of everything? We seem to see like the cyclops in Greek mythology, as if we had one eye on our...
Put This In Your Pipe And Smoke It
22 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
We all know that smoking cigarettes is bad. But what about smoking a pipe or cigars? Since you don't inhale, is it better for your health? Or at least...
What Makes Hummingbird Feathers So Beautiful
21 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
If you've ever had a bird feeder, you've probably noticed how much more colorful hummingbirds are compared to other birds. So how are hummingbirds so ...
Why Do Wind Turbines Have Three Blades?
20 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
If you've ever driven by a wind farm, you may have noticed that the turbines most likely have three blades. Not two, not five, but three.
Iridescence As Camouflage
15 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Some beetles have beautiful, shiny carapaces that look like metal, or a jewel. That shininess is called iridescence. It's caused when tiny structures ...
Making Love, Not War
14 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Scientists have compared chimpanzee and bonobo brains and think their different behavior could be due to brain structure.
Sand Dunes Repel Each Other
13 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Sand dunes are everywhere. They form deserts on Earth, Venus, Mars, and Saturn's moon Titan. They even form underwater on seafloors and riverbeds.
Does Money Make Us Happy?
12 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Does money make us happy? The answer, according to psychologists, is both: up to a certain point money can buy happiness, so to speak.
Helpful Parrots
07 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Humans are often quite willing to help one another, but it's not an exclusively human trait. Thanks to new research, scientists have learned that Afri...
Do Flying Fish Actually Fly?
06 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
There are around sixty-four species of flying fish, and they really do fly.
The Oceans Are Warming
01 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The world's oceans are like a sponge for heat, absorbing about 90 percent of the excess warming caused by carbon emissions from human activities. That...
Fossils Of The Future
29 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Our era has a tentative name: the Anthropocene era. There’s debate over when it started, and whether we merit a new geological epoch at all, but som...
How Old Is Cosmic Dust?
28 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
By studying various kinds of rocks, scientists know that our solar system is about 4.6 billion years old. However, in 2019 an international team of re...
The Urban Coyote Patrol
27 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
It’s nighttime. The moon is bright, and the day’s hubbub has quieted. In the distance, you hear a coyote howl. This scene sounds like something fr...
Why Do Opossums Hang Upside Down by Their Tails?
24 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Have you ever seen a cartoon of a sleeping opossum hanging upside down by its tail? Well, you may be surprised to learn that 'possums don't actually s...
Monocarpic Plants
23 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Agave, like aloe, is a succulent, meaning it has a number of characteristics that help it survive hot, dry desert climates. It's also a monocarpic pla...
Cloudy Apple Juice
17 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Many people prefer clear apple juice to cloudy, mainly because it simply looks better. It turns out, however, that cloudy apple juice is actually bett...
The Vampire Bat Cares
16 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
When most people think of vampires, they picture a scary, solitary, blood-sucking monster from a horror movie. They don't think of a model of sharing ...