A Moment of Science

When thunderstorms are strong enough, they can knock over trees and cause large blackouts. Solar storms, however, make blackouts from thunderstorms seem like nothing. If a major solar storm hit the U.S., we'd have to worry about blackouts all over the place.

Sea urchins are small, furry, and sometimes colorful. They usually don't bite humans, but they do have really sharp teeth that researchers learned sharpen themselves. 

It is very easy to ignore requests made via email, while similar requests made in person are met with understanding. All of this has to do with psychology. Email lacks the verbal cues and body languages that signify trustworthiness.

Winter mornings can be drab, which is why many people look forward to birds and butterflies returning in spring. Butterflies are good at brightening the day. It sems fitting, since they evolved from the drab moth when they moved into the daytime over 200 million years ago. 

You're in a line at a cafeteria. You take a plate off the top of a stack of plates. The other plates in the stack rise from below just far enough to present the next plate at the same height as the one you just took. This system reflects a general principle of springs: if you put twice as much force on a spring, it compresses, or stretches, twice as far.

A CubeSat is the size of a toaster, weighs about three pounds, and orbits the Earth. These nanosatellites are a particularly tiny type of research spacecraft. They were originally proposed about 20 years ago, and the first one launched in 2003. 

A variety of characteristics are used to diagnose autism in children. Often, it's poor social and communication skills which others observe in children that compel parents to get a child tested. There are currently no unique biological indicators of autism.

The all-too familiar American cockroach almost seems to know where you're going to strike. What's the tip-off that sends the cockroach running?

It seems like a lot of animals use only three limbs sometimes, and since using three limbs seems to work well for them, why haven't any of them evolved that way?

There's a reason you won't find electric eels at your local petting zoo. These fierce creatures can release over 800 volts of electricity. Today we will investigate precisely how these powerful shocks are made by eels.

A new study suggests that people eat more when they eat with family and friends. When eating with strangers, however, people take smaller portions in order to make a good impression.

There is reason to worry about the future of birds in North America. A large team of researchers published a study showing that the bird population of North America has dropped by 29 percent since 1970. That's about three billion fewer birds

When a star burns through most of its nuclear material, it can explode in a bright supernove and leave behind a dense core. If that core is massive enough, it'll become a neutron star.

According to legend, King Arther gained the crown by pulling a sword from a rock. Queen honeybees have an equally enchanting way of ascending to the throne. It's called the royal jelly.

A camel can travel hundreds of miles, over several days, without stopping to drink. On today's Moment of Science, we'll learn how camels survive the dry desert.

The stripes on some insects help them survive in the wild. When prey with high-contrast stripes move, their stripes blur, making it hard for a predator to see them. That's what a group of scientists found out in an experiment on praying mantises. 

It might not be a great idea to use mouthwash right after working out, at least if you want to experience the blood pressure-reducing effects seen after exercise. Mouth bacteria play an important role in reducing blood pressure after we exercise, and using antibacterial mouthwash can get rid of it. 

Some spider webs look as though they were thrown together at the last minute, while others look as though they wer meticulously planned months in advance. It's hard to say just how long it took for spiders to evolve such intricate webs, but evidence suggests that orb webs have been around for a long time, at least 100 million years.

In order to fight climate change, we need to find new ways of generating electricity that don't involve burning fuels and generating greenhouse gases. Physicists know that there is energy available in the temperature difference between a hot object and its cooler surroundings. A thermoelectrice device is made of special materials that can capture this energy and convert it directly into electricit...

Here’s the common advice about peanuts: if you’re allergic, stay away. Nut allergies are notorious for causing severe, even deadly, reactions. But new treatments for peanut allergies are on the rise.

Are you annoyed by that guy in your office who plays solitaire all day and never actually accomplishes anything? Then you'd really be aggravated in the work environment of the Damraland mole-rats of the Kalahari Desert, where up to 40 percent of a colony is "that guy."

People who listen to music a lot can perceive the similarity between two of the same notes in different octaves. This may not seem like such a unique ability, since most people in Western countries are able to do this. Still, scientists have long wondered whether it's innate knowledge or learned through exposure.

While the first human civilizations grew in Mesopotamia, and the ancient Egyptians were building the pyraminds, there were still woolly mammoths living on a remote arctic island.

The Apollo 11 mission that landed the first humans on the moon famously blasted off from Florida, but NASA was in Arizona, too. In 1967, two years before Neil Armstrong left his footprint in the lunar dust, engineers figured out a way to recreate the moon's surface . . . on Earth.

Voices often indicate thoughts and emotions indirectly. Cues in the form of pitches, tones and pauses are qualities of voices that listeners use to make inferences about a speaker's mind. But those cues aren't always represented in content that we read, like in a transcript or a text message.