A Moment of Science

When a sweet tooth meets a numb tongue

04 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In an ideal universe you could scarf carton-loads of super vanilla swirl ice cream every night after dinner without remorse. In the real world, howeve...

The giant penguin discovered on a field trip

03 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

What was your favorite field trip as a kid? The zoo? The modern art museum? For a group of New Zealand students, it’d be hard to beat one memorable ...

The false underwater city of Zakynthos

02 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In shallow water off the Greek Island Zakynthos, you can see what appears to be the remains of an ancient city. But is it really?

Scales, feathers, and fur, oh my!

30 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Mammals, birds, and reptiles are so different from one another. How could they all evolve from a common ancestor?

Do dogs know the names of their favorite toys?

29 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Have you ever wondered whether your dog understands at least some of what you say to them? Scientists have too.

What happens when good bananas go bad

28 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

You find a perfect, yellow banana in the store, but the next day at home it has brown spots. What happened?

Why does Diet Coke float?

27 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Here's an at-home experiment you can try: take a can of "classic" Coca-Cola and a can of Diet Coke, and without opening either one submerge them in wa...

Cue the laugh track: Why hyenas giggle and guffaw

26 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

These polka-dotted predators are no laughing matter. Learn all about hyenas with A Moment of Science.

Packing for your desert trip

23 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Everyone knows that white reflects heat and black absorbs it. Does that mean you shouldn't wear black though?

Does soda rot your teeth?

22 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

There's an urban legend that teeth dissolve in a glass of soda. How harmful is it really?

What's it like on Mercury?

21 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The great astronomer Carl Sagan used to say that if he were transported anywhere in the solar system he would know which planet he was on just by look...

Why don't adults get ear aches?

20 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The typical toddler averages about four ear aches per year. But when's the last time you had an ear infection?

Is there an easy way to make diamonds?

19 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Diamonds are only occasionally brought to the surface. But because carbon is plentiful, science fiction, such as Neal Stephenson’s novel The Diamond...

Can zebras be domesticated?

16 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

People like to ride horses, so why not zebras?

When grey goo attacks

15 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Some nanotechnology theorists and science fiction aficiondos imagine a more ominous possibility. What if one of these tiny robots were given the abili...

Hungry porpoises may find dinner at hole foods

14 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

It’s dinnertime in the North Sea, and you’re a hungry porpoise. Sadly, there’s no oceanic grocery store. What’s a famished sea creature to do?

Pigeons have their own superstitions

13 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Would you be surprised to learn that human beings aren't the only animals to behave superstitiously? The psychologist B.F. Skinner showed that you can...

How do clouds float?

12 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

One thing we at A Moment of Science love is having the opportunity to explain the science behind things you see every day in the world around you.

The phenomenon of long colds

09 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

One infamous feature of COVID-19 is the phenomenon of “long COVID.” Researchers hadn’t previously looked for long persisting forms of colds or t...

Do ants drown every time it rains?

08 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Ants must have a variety of survival strategies. How do ground-nesting ants cope with rain?

Which came first: the woodpecker or the fungus?

07 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Set aside the question about the chicken and the egg, what about the woodpecker and tree fungus?

The benefits of a walkable neighborhood

06 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

It makes sense that if you live in a neighborhood where you can walk to places to do errands and such, that would be good for your health.

Stay balanced with your center of gravity

05 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Everyone has a center of gravity. Every object has one, too. It’s the point in our body where all weight is evenly balanced.

You have a bacterial cloud following you around

02 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Pigpen's condition might seem a bit farfetched, but scientists are finding that we might all be more like Pigpen than we imagine. Only, instead of dus...

Growing up with your taste preferences

01 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Our lifelong food preferences are largely shaped by the foods we're exposed to early on in childhood.

What makes you see the man in the moon?

31 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Pareidolia is a term from psychology that refers to the tendency in people to perceive a meaningful pattern in a vague stimulus.

What's the autokinetic effect?

30 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

"Auto" means "self" and kinetic means "motion." When you see a tiny point of light moving, it's often because you are moving yourself--or, rather, you...

Skydiving spiders in the Amazon

29 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

What's brown, has eight legs and flies?

Even rats can be pessimistic

26 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Ever notice when you're having a bad day it always seems to get that much worse?

New Caledonian crows can infer weight

25 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

If you see an object blowing down the street, you will infer that it is light. That will be your conclusion even if you can’t determine what the obj...

Why do our eyes get puffy when we cry?

24 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

When you cry for emotional reasons, your eyes act differently. So what happens next?

Immune cells and the struggle against aging

23 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Aging is a complex process involving accumulating damage to the cellular mechanisms of life. Anti-aging researchers want to understand and combat this...

Color-changing monkeys

22 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

A species of howler monkey isn't dying its fur, but they are changing color.

The spider that gives milk

19 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Cows and humans aren't the only ones who produce milk. There are also some insects and spiders that produce a milk-like substance to feed their young.

Queen of the drowned: Bumblebees that can survive a week underwater

18 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

When water leaked into containers of dormant queen bumblebees, the scientists assumed they’d need to hold a state funeral. But amazingly, the regal ...

Climate change is making insects eat more crops

17 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Scientists are saying that as the climate warms and temperatures rise, we might lose more crops to insects.

Brick by magnetic brick

16 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Did you know that ancient bricks are magnetic?

Pandas always know what's for dinner

15 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

These days, pandas have bamboo for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. But that wasn't always the case.

Emotion differentiation makes you less angry

12 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Although we all get angry at times, for some people anger turns to aggression, while for others it doesn’t. The reasons for this have to do with how...

An amphibian mother feeds her offspring with 'milk'

11 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Human mothers secrete milk to feed their babies. So do other mammals. Biologists now know that many other kinds of animal mothers also secrete milk-li...

Cultured fruit flies

10 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Fruit flies might not have manners when they invade your home, but they do have culture.

The ocean's fish need more clean water

09 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Making their way through polluted water, fish become disoriented, as sights, smells, and sounds crowd the waters. Chemical and noise pollution, and re...

Putting science on display at the Great Exhibition of 1851

08 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

These days, you can hear about self-driving cars when you turn on the news, or you can browse store shelves for high-tech gadgets. But in the mid-nine...

Optics and glue

05 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

A simple exercise to do at home with A Moment of Science

Would you drink this?

04 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Would you drink a mixture of acetaldehyde, ethyl acetate, acetone, acetic acid, and a few of the compounds known as hexenals, which give fresh-cut gra...

Schools of fish are silent swimmers

03 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Swimming in a school has a lot of benefits for fish, from social opportunities to avoiding predators to finding more food.

Orangutans talk about the past

02 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Researchers have heard orangutans make the noise after the danger has passed—a sign that they’re communicating about the past, and the first evide...

Making an egg-cellent cake

01 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Craving dessert? Today’s episode considers some particularly sweet science: the importance of eggs for baking a cake.

Giving a gull a break

28 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

It’s a tough world out there, so really, what’s a gull to do?

It's not just the heat, it's the humidity

27 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

If the air temperature gets close to our body temperature, something more is needed to keep the skin cooler than the inner body. We sweat.

Coprophagy keeps birds healthy

26 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

By human standards, some animals’ eating habits are strange, and even disgusting. One example is coprophagy—eating poop.

How to see what soap does to water

25 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Water molecules attract each other. The molecules at the surface of a body of water make a film under tension. That film is strong enough to support a...

Your friendly Amazonian slingshot spider

24 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Researchers reported that they discovered a tiny spider in the Peruvian Amazon rain forest that has a behavior that’s surprisingly similar to the we...

Reflecting on how others see you

21 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

One mirror is not enough to see yourself as others see you. When you look at a bathroom mirror you see an image of yourself with left and right revers...

The fault that runs through Scotland

20 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

If you look at a map of Scotland, you may notice a line cutting straight through the country. This line, called the Great Glen Fault, is the result of...

Why does cotton wrinkle?

19 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

A cool, dry cotton fiber springs back after being bent. A warm, damp cotton fiber doesn't. Moisture and temperature make the difference.

A tarantula with the blues

18 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Blue jays, poison dart frogs, and peacocks—each of these animals is distinct for their same vibrant color. But have you ever seen a blue spider?

When is yellow really yellow?

17 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Why a mix of red light and green light looks yellow, in this Moment of Science.

Male mammals aren't always bigger than females

14 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Evolutionary biologists thought it was a general rule among mammals that males are bigger, but that's not always the case.

Robert Hook found a surprise in cork

13 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The 17th-century English physicist Robert Hooke was curious about the remarkable properties of cork -- its ability to float, its springy quality, its ...

A summer night mystery: heat lightning

12 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

One of the more mysterious pleasures of a warm summer evening is the spectacle of lightning from distant thunderstorms, flickering silently on the hor...

Why one rotten apple can spoil the barrel

11 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Learn about the role that ethylene plays in ripening fruit with today's A Moment of Science

Speedy snails

10 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Over the past 100,000 years, a snail species has done what it normally takes a species millions of years to do: give live birth.

Rediscovered in a museum drawer

07 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The distant past is poorly known, and paleontologists find fossil evidence for new large animals all the time.

The fruit that grows on trees, literally

06 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Jabuticaba is a fruit native to Brazil. It’s the size and color of a plum, with a white pulp and several seeds

What makes dreams so hard to remember?

05 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Perhaps you’ve heard that the average person dreams four to six times each night. But did you know that most of us are unable to recall 90% of our d...

Otter heroes with a secret mission

04 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The carefree southern sea otters of central California’s coast have had a secret mission: working to fight the devastating loss of kelp forests due ...

What animals will thrive in the next century?

03 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Researchers used statistical tools to forecast which characteristics the animals of the future will likely have.

Parenting styles and telomeres

31 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Research suggests there's a link between parenting styles and health effects later in life

Saved by the boil

30 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

As any aficionado will tell you, water can be just as important as the tea leaves themselves when it comes to a good brew.

Why are glass bottles different colors?

29 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

If the color of the bottles was significant enough to control how they’re recycled, then surely the color was more than cosmetic. So what's the reas...

The future of New Zealand's birds

28 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Because of the isolation, New Zealand has evolved a unique set of animals dominated by abundant bird species found nowhere else.

A matter of preference

27 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Exposure to music, art, and architecture can have a formative impact on our sense of self.

Humans aren't unique when it comes to fingerprints

24 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Fingerprints might be unique to one person, but they aren't unique to one species.

The starch difference

23 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Have you ever made rice that was perfectly fluffy and then the next day, taken it out of the fridge only to find it hard and crumbly?

How do our organs heal themselves?

22 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Normally, when tissue gets injured, cells start replicating and make new tissue. But what about the heart?

Benjamin Franklin and his fabric swatches in the snow

21 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In a letter written in 1761, Benjamin Franklin tells how he collected some little squares of broadcloth. Franklin wanted to demonstrate that these col...

Extremophiles go to the ends of the Earth and thrive there

20 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Just like Goldilocks, humans have searched for a place that's "just right" to live in. That's not the same for all species, though.

Colors and their opposites, with paint

17 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

We usually think of paint as a substance that adds color to things. But, from a physical point of view, paint works by taking colors away.

Why do people grunt when playing tennis?

16 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Tennis players are known for the loud grunts they make during a game. Why do they do it?

Could being a dog person be in your genes?

15 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In 2019 a team of Swedish and British scientists published a study claiming that whether we chose to own a dog may be influenced by our genes.

Graphene and faster computer chips

14 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Physicists are searching for new materials with better semiconductor properties so that computers can continue to improve.

Where the sky isn't blue

13 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

We just covered why the sky is blue, but there are a few areas without color above us.

What makes the sky blue?

10 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

It can't be the atmosphere, or dust, or water droplets. So what makes the sky blue?

Temperature: A key variable in making the perfect cup of coffee

09 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Water temperature is a major element of quality control in making coffee. Why exactly is temperature important?

A rattlesnake's rattling trick

08 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Rattlesnakes modulate their rattling frequency to trick other animals into thinking the distance between them is shorter than it really is.

Cud-chewing monkeys

07 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Proboscis monkeys from Borneo and cows do have something in common: they both chew their cuds.

Rain in this desert is deadly

06 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The Atacama Desert in Northern Chile is the driest desert on Earth. The only life there is microbial, and researchers study it to get an idea of what ...

What inspired the Lorax?

03 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

One study proposes that this “sort of a man” described as “shortish, and oldish, and brownish and mossy” could have been inspired by the patas...

"Terror beasts" of the early Cambrian

02 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Paleontologists constantly search for new species of fossilized creatures from the distant past to expand our understanding of the history of life on ...

How do mosquitoes find us?

01 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Mosquitoes always seem to find us, no matter how hard we try to get away. How do they do it?

Rain on the rear window

30 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The next time you're driving during a rain shower, glance back at the rear window. You'll notice that while raindrops batter the front windshield, the...

A giant bee, rediscovered

29 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Megachile pluto, commonly called “Wallace’s giant bee” is the world’s largest bee. And perhaps its most elusive.

Do you start your day with tea or coffee?

26 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Do you prefer the jolt of coffee or a more gentle start to your day with tea?

When every day is opposite day for your organs

25 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Situs inversus totalis means that all the organs, blood vessels, and nerves in the chest and abdomen are flipped to the opposite side.

Why do square waves happen?

24 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Normally you’d just see waves coming in parallel to the shore. But what if there were also waves moving perpendicular to the shore?

Humans have been hanging out with cats for almost 10,000 years

23 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

A grave in Cyprus from 7500 BC shows a furry feline and human owner buried together. It’s the oldest known site of a tame cat.

Prehistoric air conditioning

22 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

How did dinosaurs keep themselves cool?

Genetic mutation and pain

19 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Did you know it’s possible to have a gene mutation that really does make bumping into furniture or even getting surgery totally painless?

Walking uphill is hard work

18 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

What makes walking uphill so much harder?