Big professional news: After 5 years at Vox, I’m going independent!
I’m launching my own show on YouTube + TikTok. Journalistically rigorous, genuinely optimistic explainers about tech that could change our future.
Introducing… Huge If True. Find the full trailer on my youtube channel and subscribe for the first episode!
What is the biggest volcano in the world?
Depends who you ask! Here are the top 3 contenders… and by the end, you decide the real winner.
But if we look BEYOND our planet, there’s another volcano that’s even bigger
To see that…follow along! #volcano #biggest #hawaii #eruption
Earth has an evil twin.
There are technically three planets in the goldilocks zone of our own solar system. Mars has garnered a ton of attention as a place that might be host to alien life. We’ve successfully landed rovers and sampled the martian atmosphere and ground, but Venus largely remains a mystery.
This earth-sized planet is known for being an extreme hellscape, but in recent years NASA and others have decided it’s time to take a closer look at our evil twin.
#venus #space #NASA #science #aliens
What’s really inside the Earth?
The deepest hole anyone has ever dug is only 0.2% of the way to the Earth’s center. But then….how do we know that our Earth has a solid core?!?
For a long time we thought the entire inside was molten, until a scientist looked at how ripples from earthquakes – seismic waves – bounced around inside the earth.
Now we know we have a solid inner core that rotates at a different rate than on the surface, and right now it’s slowing down!
To find out why, follow along!
#science #earth #core #inside #earthquake
How far away is the moon, really?
Most people don’t understand how far away the moon really is…
To find out how many Earths you could fit between the moon and us… follow along!
#moon #space #animation
What if we made a shrink ray?
What would happen if we invented a real-life shrink ray?
As you start shrinking, by the time you’re the size of a small dog, you’re starting to feel chilly. At the size of a smartphone, you’re COLD. REALLY COLD.
Think of yourself as a cube. As you shrink, your volume drops way faster than your surface area.
Your skin is the surface area, where you lose heat, and everything inside you is the volume, where you make heat… A human body isn’t meant to be this small!
So unless you changed your biology, as you shrink you’d be losing heat faster than you can make it! Eventually turning into a popsicle.
But, could you become a GIANT? To find out, follow along!
#shorts #shrinkray #science #human #whatif
They found the colossal squid by accident.
Inside the stomach of a sperm whale, there’s an alarming amount of colossal squid. This animal can grow over 9 meters long. That’s nearly the length of a school bus!
Scientists estimate that colossal squid make up around 80% of a sperm whale’s diet in the southern ocean, which means there’s gotta be TONS of them in the ocean… right? We’ve known these animals have existed for over a century, but we have yet to film a live adult one in its natural habitat. What’s the deal?
To find out why and to learn more about the newest way to find animals in the deep… follow along!
#ocean #exploration #science #colossalsquid
Dark energy is getting weaker?
This new map shows dark energy might be getting weaker. That’s odd.
Every dot you see here is either a galaxy or a special kind of black hole, and there are 47 million in this new 3D map of our universe.
It’s uprooting what we thought we knew about dark energy and implying our universe might be headed toward a very different ending than we thought…
For more on that, follow along!
#science #energy #universe #galaxy #blackhole NOIRlab
This machine grows diamonds
This crazy machine mimics the inside of the Earth to grow diamonds.
If you dig deep into the Earth’s mantle, you’ll enter hot, plastic-like rock filled with carbon atoms. These atoms are squeezed together over millions of years by the intense pressure down there.
On the surface, our machine uses powerful arms to squish carbon together. This speeds up the growing process from millions of years, to under a week…
But now, we have an even newer way to make diamonds. To see that, follow along!
#diamonds #earth #tech #science #pressure heat
Why do we find so many meteorites in Antarctica?
60% of meteorites found on Earth are found there! It’s not because it’s at the pole.
The reason is these special blue ice areas. And how they form…
For more adventures in Antarctica and optimistic science and tech stories, follow along!
#Antarctica #Meteorites #Science #BlueIce
Our brains got bigger. Now they’re shrinking?
his chart shows human brains size over time. They got way bigger, fast. But now they’re shrinking? (No, it’s not the phones!)
About 2 million years ago something changed and it altered the course of human evolution. Our brains just started RAPIDLY growing, the organ nearly doubled in size in just a few hundred thousand years. This turning point is what allowed us to evolve into the intelligent species we are today.
But now…
To learn more, follow along!
#evolution #human origins #science
How do they build underwater tunnels?
How do they not fill up with water!? Here’s how the British and French built the Channel Tunnel, one of the longest undersea tunnels…
For more stories like this, follow along.
#shorts #science #channel #tunnel #underwater
