Cafe Science

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.

The solstice alignments of Stonehenge, explained.

Ancient skeletons can tell us a great deal about the past, including the age, gender and even the social status of its former owner. But how can we know all of these details simply by examining some old, soil-caked bones? Farnaz Khatibi examines a fascinating branch of science known as biological anthropology.

More than 18,300 candidates applied to be astronauts in NASA's latest class-smashing the record of 8,000 applicants in 1978-and only 12 got the job. Here's who made the cut.

In 2018, NASA will launch a solar probe that will travel closer to the sun than any spacecraft before. But why? What are they looking for?

Perpetual motion machines - devices that can do work indefinitely without any external energy source - have captured many inventors' imaginations because they could totally transform our relationship with energy. There's just one problem: they don't work. Why not? Netta Schramm describes the pitfalls of perpetual motion machines.

Tiny lab-grown organs. A spongy cloth that absorbs oil spills. Sure, why not. These are some of the finalists for the European Inventor Award.

Fraser Corsan wants to go faster than a Ferrari F50 and higher than Mount Everest-with nothing but his own two wings to carry him. Corsan is a wingsuit pilot. He wants to break four of the world wingsuit records.

Robbert Dijkgraaf is a theoretical physicist and Leon Levy Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. He is also the co-author of "The Usefulness of Useless Knowledge." In this video, he explains how Albert Einstein saw the world in a different way from how most scientists see it.

Why so many languages invented words for colors in the same order.

When radium was first discovered, its luminous green color inspired people to add it into beauty products and jewelry. It wasn't until much later that we realized that radium's harmful effects outweighed its visual benefits. Unfortunately, radium isn't the only pigment that historically seemed harmless or useful but turned out to be deadly. J. V. Maranto details history's deadliest colors. Lesson by J. V. Maranto, animation by Juan M. Urbina.

Scientists have created, yet another state of matter called a supersolid! But what is it, and what does it do?

Have you ever wondered what happens to a painkiller, like ibuprofen, after you swallow it? Medicine that slides down your throat can help treat a headache, a sore back, or a throbbing sprained ankle. But how does it get where it needs to go in the first place?

What if there were a tunnel through the middle of the earth and you jumped in?

More than 300 million people around the world suffer from asthma, and around 250,000 people die from it each year. But why do people get asthma, and how can this disease be deadly? Christopher E. Gaw describes the main symptoms and treatments of asthma.