Awesome Science

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.

Utah State University Professor Boyd F. Edwards uses a Hoberman sphere to demonstrate the conservation of angular momentum. After spinning the sphere to generate angular momentum, he pulls its string to shrink its size, and its speed increases dramatically.

The idea of filling a swimming pool with gelatin seems simple enough, but as engineer Mark Rober explains, it’s way more complicated than you might think. Leave it to a rocket scientist to figure out how to boil and then refrigerate an entire pool filled with 15 tons of Jello.

The man we know as Vsauce Michael of the channel formerly known as DONG is shows off a nifty plaything. Designed by Pacific Puzzle Works, this oversize top conceals a smaller top inside that automagically spins when you spin the larger top. Available as a kit or fully-assembled.

A neat little loop captured from The Royal Institution’s fascinating video about trapping particles in a particle accelerator. The machine shown here is a rudimentary version of a Paul Trap – a saddle-shaped device that can hold an object in its center as it rotates.

WIRED sat down with forensic scientist Thiago Piwowarczyk and art historian Jeffrey Taylor PhD to get the inside skinny on ways that science and a skilled eye can help detect art forgeries. Abstract works like Jackson Pollock’s drips and splashes are especially challenging.

We wouldn’t be here on this planet if it weren’t for evolution – and a big part of the evolutionary process is natural selection. Primer presents a great 10 minute lesson on how the whole “survival of the fittest” thing works, along with a visual simulation with little blobby creatures.

One of the more entertaining science experiments involves slapping neodymium magnets on a AA battery, and placing it into an length of copper wire. Mr. Michal plays with the idea, using a loop of wire to see how long batteries last, then drag races them to see which is most energetic.

In theory, a clone should be an exact copy. But the reality is even if we chose to create engineered copies of humans, every little variable in their environment would make them a very different person from their genetic doppelgänger. Life Noggin explains.

Steel wool is really useful for scrubbing and cleaning. But it’s also incredibly flammable. The guys from The King of Random decided to play with fire, and see how it might react if a lit piece of the shredded metal was dropped into a cup of styrofoam filled with liquid oxygen.

The Slow Mo Guys have captured some amazing imagery at speeds over 100,000 fps. But to visualize something as fast as the speed of light, they had to visit a science lab at Cal Tech to take advantage of a camera that shoots at 10 trillion fps. Learn more here.

Here’s a little life hack – if you drop an alkaline battery on its end, it should bounce higher if its depleted than when charged. Warped Perception decided to test this out in front of his slow-motion camera, to see how differently-charged batteries behave.

MIT’s food computers are small robotic gardens that let people control, gather and share data about the conditions of a plant’s growth. Such systems can be built anywhere in the world, greatly accelerating learning and experimentation to improve crop yields.

Good, bad, or ugly, most living creatures are aware of everything they experience throughout life (we think). But at what point did life forms become self-aware? Kurzgesagt digs into the puzzling nature of consciousness, and what makes sentience even a thing.