Cafe Science

4000 years ago, the ancient Sumerians made a surprising discovery: if they scraped the bark off a particular kind of tree and ate it, their pain disappeared. Little did they know that what they'd found was destined to influence the future course of medicine. Krishna Sudhir traces the history of aspirin.

Grits are better with syrup in them!

A new study might've found a possible cure for peanut allergies. How does it work?

During the warmer months, especially at night during the full moon, horseshoe crabs emerge from the sea to spawn. Waiting for them are teams of lab workers, who capture the horseshoe crabs by the hundreds of thousands, take them to labs, harvest their cerulean blood, then return them to the sea. Why? Elizabeth Cox illuminates the incredible properties of horseshoe crab blood.

Our bodies - the physical, biological parts of us - and our minds - the thinking, conscious aspects - have a complicated, tangled relationship. Which one primarily defines you or your self? Are you a body with a mind or a mind with a body? Maryam Alimardani investigates.

What if we are not creators, but creations?

We live in an era of self driving cars, autonomous drones, deep learning algorithms, computers that beat humans at chess and go, and so on. So it's natural to ask, will artificial superintelligence replace humans, take our jobs, and destroy human civilization? Or will AI just become tools like regular computers. AI researcher Max Tegmark helps explain the myths and facts about superintelligence, the impending machine takeover, etc.

The universe is bustling with matter and energy. Even in the vast, apparent emptiness of intergalactic space, there's one hydrogen atom per cubic meter. But is there such thing as a total absence of everything? Is it possible to make a completely empty space? Rolf Landua and Anais Rassat explain the science behind vacuums.

Biology textbooks are full of drawings of DNA, but none of those show what DNA actually looks like. Sure, they're good models for understanding how DNA works, but inside of real cells, it's a whole lot more interesting. Learn why we can't look directly at DNA, and find out how DNA is actually packed inside cells.

What happens if we bring the sun to earth? No, seriously.

Is teleportation possible? Could a baseball transform into something like a radio wave, travel through buildings, bounce around corners, and change back into a baseball? Oddly enough, thanks to quantum mechanics, the answer might actually be yes... sort of! Sajan Saini explains.

Scientists have discovered how to create a real life 'superlaser' using an ultra-pure diamond. How exactly does it work?2

The light from KIC 8462852 faded again, and scientists have some new theories about what's behind astronomy's most mysterious star.

The nose's olfactory receptors are stimulated when we smell food and other odors. But could the process of smelling cause weight gain?

This video is about why it's harder to successfully land spacecraft and landers and rovers on Mars than on Earth, or Venus, or the Moon, or Titan, or asteroids. It all comes down to atmospheric density! When there's no atmosphere, you can do a powered descent in a flimsy tinfoil spacecraft like the Lunar Module, and when there's plenty of atmosphere you can do an unpowered descent via heat shield and parachutes like the space shuttle, Apollo command module, Soyuz, Huygens, etc. But on Mars with its thin air, you have to do both powered & unpowered descent, getting the worst of both worlds.

Researchers at Stanford University developed a soft, squishy robot that "grows" like a vine and can squeeze through tight spaces. It can also lift heavy objects, which makes it potentially ideal for search-and-rescue operations.

The human brain is visibly split into a left and right side. This structure has inspired one of the most pervasive ideas about the brain: that the left side controls logic and the right side controls creativity. And yet, this is a myth, unsupported by scientific evidence. So how did this idea come about, and what does it get wrong? Elizabeth Waters looks into this long held misconception.

1, 11, 21, 1211, 111221. These are the first five elements of a number sequence. Can you figure out what comes next? Alex Gendler reveals the answer and explains how beyond just being a neat puzzle, this type of sequence has practical applications as well.

Finding the source of a disease outbreak requires intensive detective work from health experts. But is finding Patient Zero even possible?

If you're not a morning person, science says you probably never will be.

Broccoli is one of the most nutritious vegetables. However, boiling it takes many of those essential nutrients out. There's a simpler way to cook it and retain all the nutrition. Following is a complete transcript of the video.