PBS_ItsOKToBeSmart

23 Reasons Science Gave Us to be Cheerful

Some of the biggest evolution questions finally answered.

Some of the biggest evolution questions finally answered.

Building a perfect igloo takes cool science!

Some of the biggest evolution questions finally answered.

Some of the biggest evolution questions finally answered.

This is the first-ever video of what we’re calling the "hermit crab caterpillar"! We’re pretty sure this strange caterpillar is a NEW SPECIES. We went to the Peruvian Amazon to see amazing things, but we never expected this :) But that makes me wonder: What *is* a species anyway? And how do you know if you’ve found a new species?

Some of the biggest evolution questions finally answered.

Some of the biggest evolution questions finally answered.

How many species are there on Earth? In biology, this is one of a fundamental question that we still don’t have a very good answer for. Imagine if chemists didn’t know all the elements of the periodic table, or if physicists didn’t know all of the particles of the standard model. Knowing how many different species there are is information we need to know in order to protect the environment, but it

All 12 days… in ONE video!

For the last 50 years we've wondered whether plants can think... Haven't we?

As we get ready to watch that big football game that my lawyers tell me I’m not allowed to say the name of, let’s celebrate a champion of the bird world: Stealthy and silent owls! Learn how owls fly so silently, how they see in the dark, and how owls’ incredible hearing makes them such superb aerial hunters.

As we get ready to watch that big football game that my lawyers tell me I’m not allowed to say the name of, let’s celebrate a champion of the bird world: Stealthy and silent owls!

Spit is critical for our health. Actually.

The blurred line between legend and science.

Ever find yourself wishing for relationship advice and have no one to turn to? Looking for the secrets to a long and happy relationship but can’t find the answers? Maybe you just want to know how to tell that certain someone that you like them, but don’t know how to make the first move? Have no fear, Mother Nature is here! Other animals have millennia worth of mating experience, maybe they can tea

Birthday math has never been more fun.

The furthest extremes of light refraction phenomena.

It may sometimes seem like things are getting worse, but there’s lots of reasons to be optimistic about the future. More people have access to toilets and sanitation than ever before. Thanks to public health improvements like this, since 1990, 122 million children’s lives have been saved. Diseases like polio are nearing eradication. Women have more access to health care and education than ever bef

Day by day, country by country, we tend to measure seasons differently.

What relics will the 'anthropocene' age leave behind?

Astounding feats of animal memory.

With all 86 billion neurons at our disposal, humans are pretty smart beings. We are the most intelligent species on the planet. But what about lesser species, say, how smart is a pulsating wad of yellow gue? Physarum polycephalum, or better known as slime mold, can be found sometimes on stale <a href="https://rumble.com/v471q5-this-is-what-happens-to-bread-in-water.html" target="_blank">bread</a> but it is not a fungus, it is a jelly-like protist. Best is to imagine it as one big cell holding millions of nuclei and they might seem like much but slime molds are smarter than they look. Just watch the video. Slime molds can solve mazes. It does so by first exploring every path and then when it has found the food at every end, it retracts the paths that don't connect the points. Solving mazes involves remembering where you have been. Where does a single cell ball of <a href="https://rumble.com/v471q5-this-is-what-happens-to-bread-in-water.html" target="_blank">bread</a> hold memories? Physarum does this by leaving chemical trails to mark dead ends, so it can remember where it has already explored. When slime molds are presented with a <a href="https://rumble.com/v4tw83-sunflower-maze-draws-tourists-to-philippines.html" target="_blank">maze</a> that has more than one solution, they will even figure out the shortest one. No matter the shape of the maze, they will almost always manage to connect the distributed food sources by the shortest path. If that does not impress you, realize that once you start adding points, mapping efficient networks becomes an incredibly complex problem and humans use powerful computers to accomplish just the same. What other wonders can this simple organism accomplish? We wouldn’t want to spoil your fun by saying anything more! Grab yourselves a cup of coffee and enjoy the rest of the video!

Beyond what we can touch, taste, smell, and hear, we experience the universe through light. But how did we come to discover light, and how did we learn light’s true nature, as the fastest thing in the universe, an electromagnetic spectrum, a wave and particle capable of the most amazing things? Here is the history of light, according to physics.