Awesome Science

For those of you who were sleeping in class that day, before the earth broke into continents, about 1/3rd of our planet was covered with a landmass known as Pangea. What If attempts to deduce what life might be like if we could still drive from Chicago to Paris, and assuming that we actually evolved to become what we are.

This new channel is a collaboration by SciShow host Hank Green, musician Andrew Huang, and microorganism enthusiast James Weiss. It delves deep into the world of the trillions of microscopic organisms that surround us. We recommend starting off with Meet the Microcosmos for a primer to this fascinating universe.

Aerogel has some amazing properties. It’s insanely lightweight, and is an incredible insulator. Recently, Derek Muller of Veritasium put this to the test, by standing behind a blanket infused with silica aerogel being hit by a Boring Company Not a Flamethrower. Now we’d like to see the same test with a serious flamethrower.

Filmmaker Roman De Giuli used crisp macro photography of iron powder, magnets, pigments, and glitter to capture this visually spectacular short film, which despite its otherworldly looks was created without any CGI. Music by Son-J.

Macrophotography experts Beauty of Science captured incredible close-up footage of the interactions between water, ice, vinegar, and other substances to demonstrate endothermic processes in front of a high-resolution thermal camera. If you haven’t seen Getting Hot, it’s worth a watch too.

The cinematic trailer for the interstellar follow-up to the popular space sandbox game Kerbal Space Program doesn’t show any gameplay, but that doesn’t make it any less awesome, as Kerbals race through space backed by M83’s epic Outro. For more on the game’s new features go here, and learn more from the developers.

Researchers from Keio University in Japan have devised a wearable mechanical device that gives humans a moving, vertebrate tail. While it might look ridiculous, the air-powered appendage can be used to improve balance, much in the way that animals use their tails.

“It’s like a cross between silver and milk.” Gallium is a pretty amazing element, a shiny metal that melts above 85.57ºF. The Slow Mo Guys decided to play with some of the stuff in front of their high-speed camera, capturing some amazing footage of the metal’s properties when in motion.

Magnet enthusiast Magnetic Games decided to see what would happen when he introduced a bunch of his small, Buckyballs-style spheres to some of his incredibly powerful neodymium monolith magnets. The impacts are quite spectacular, and especially neat to watch in slow motion.

Kurzgesagt once again dives deep within our bodies, this time to explore the complement system, a part of our immune system which can activate to help defend us from disease, but that also needs to be kept in check to keep from destroying us from the inside.

Derek Neutron and Barbara Proton… Usually they engage in a 3-way with Carmen Electron. Exurb1a presents a brief “educational” video, skimming over how the universe works, from tiny subatomic particles to entire galaxies. At least it’s better than this explanation.

On the surface, the power to see through anything seems like a pretty useful superhero ability. But as What If explains, not only would you need an X-ray emitting sidekick to take advantage of your power, but your viewing subjects would probably end up getting cancer unless they wore safety aprons.

There’s been a long-held concern that the electromagnetic radiation that emanate from cell phones, power lines, and other devices could cause harm to our bodies. But is there any truth to this concern? Kurzgesagt attempts to separate the fact from fiction in this controvertial topic.

There’s an oft-repeated story among school children that if you managed to keep your eyeballs open while sneezing, that they’d pop right out of their sockets. SciShow digs into this little gem to see if there’s any reason to actually be worried the next time you let out an atchoo.

The guys at MEL Science show off a visually impressive, but simple to execute experiment about fluid density and immiscibility. You too can make it rain colorful droplets inside of a glass with some water, vegetable oil, and food coloring. Detailed instructions here.

xkcd creator Randall Munroe’s latest book offers solutions to real-world problems. But don’t expect to get advice you can actually use. Instead, you’ll receive overly-complicated and impractical methods, in what he calls “world’s least useful self-help book.” Drops 9/3/19.

Traveling to and colonizing Mars seems like a very daunting task, but as Aperture points out, humans have been able to influence the climate and landscape on Earth, so why couldn’t we do it there? His video looks at the big changes that would have to happen to make the planet habitable.

Veritasium managed to make his skin resistant to both flames and water by modifying the ultra-lightweight, synthetic known as Aerogel. It’s a very difficult material to work with, but has some amazing properties, including incredible thermal insulation and absorption.

Macro photography series Beautiful Chemistry presents an up-close look at the formation and behavior of bubbles, with different chemical solutions and electrical charges producing some very different volumes, sizes, and arrangements of the air-filled orbs. The accompanying soundtrack is wonderfully soothing.

Our bodies, brains, and blood cells thrive on oxygen, and inhaling a little extra is good for an energy boost. But is there such a thing as too much of a good thing? What If explores the hypothetical of what might happen if the Earth’s atmosphere had twice as much o2.

You might think that mammals always ate meat, but it turns out it was an evolutionary necessity due to changes in Earth’s climate. Kurzgesagt explores whether or not this change in our diets was actually good for us, or if eating meat truly has a negative impact on our health.

Engineers from MIT have developed 3D-printed objects with embedded magnetic particles that allow them to change shapes in an instant. The current prototypes are mere playthings, but the tech could give way to tiny, remote-controlled medical devices.

Scientists from Samsung’s Moscow-based AI Research Center recently showed off “Few-Shot Adversarial Learning” tech, which can generate talking head videos from just a handful of still images, and a source video of another head. It’s so impressive, they even made the Mona Lisa talk.