Tag Archives: SciShow

2020 Not So Bad For Science

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While 2020 left a lot to be desired for many of us, it wasn’t such a bad year in science. Last year, scientists found ludicrously fast stars, ancient galaxy clusters and developed a camera that could change how we study the night sky.

The fast star–S4714– was perhaps the most intriguing discovery. It was spotted at the center of the Milky Way Galaxy traveling ludicrously fast, like 85 millions kilometers per hour, or 8 percent the speed of light. A star that fast could leave Earth on a Monday and arrive at Pluto on a Wednesday night. Tune in to more discoveries in this episode of SciShow.

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Technicolor Dream Fish

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Lots of animals can change the color of their skin, but there’s nothing quite like the chameleon sand tilefish, which can change its appearance in an instant and flash the colors of the rainbow.

So how is there apparent magic act possible? Native to the Indo-Pacific, mostly off the coasts of Japan and the Philippines, the tilefish are equipped with groups of cells called iridophore, made of adjustable reflective cells called platelets that can change what colors they reflect. Then it’s all up to a series of spacing and position and their response from chemical signals from the body.

SciShow’s Rose Bear Don’t Walk, in her channel debut, tells us more of this unusual creature of the sea.

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5: Man’s Best Friend

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(EDITOR’S NOTE: Call Me Stormy has been in existence nine years now, and we have made 15,000 posts. To celebrate these milestones, today we re-publish our top 10 posts as measured by their popularity with our readers. We begin with No. 10 and will work our way up to No. 1. All of these posts have more than 900 views each, the best nearly 50,000. Here’s No. 5, originally published March 9, 2015.)

There isn’t a lot known about how and when dogs were domesticated. But we do know that the process made them very different from their wild cousins, including three really weird things that are explained in this edition of SciShow.

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How to Cure Cancer With RNA

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In addition to safeguarding us from diseases, our immune system also helps protect our bodies from itself by watching out for cancer. And that prompts the question: Could our immune system give us a leg up in developing vaccines to combat cancer? Enter vaccines based on the genetic code, specifically RNA and DNA. This approach is supposed to be faster and easier than traditional vaccine development. All this progress means we are getting closer to directing our own cells to make any protein our immune system needs. Host Michael Aranda fills in the details in this episode of SciShow.

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Poop To The Rescue

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When dealing with a pandemic, information is power. Take the coronavirus. Knowing where it is and how many people have been affected is vital to its containment and eventual eradication. We’ve mostly obtained pertinent data on COVID-19 with massive testing of people with symptoms and keeping track of the number of positives over time. Although effective, this method sometimes misses cases where a patient’s symptoms aren’t severe enough. Good news is, scientists believe they’ve stumbled upon a solution that wouldn’t require individual tests but could track the infection. The answer: good ol’ sewage, or poop. Scientists say poop isn’t just the remains of the food you ate, but includes waste your body wants to get rid of, such as dead white blood cells, microbes and, yes, viruses. Host Hank Green brings us the details in this edition of SciShow.

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Plasma Process Shows Promise

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Thanks to a centuries-old technique, recovered COVID-19 patients may be in a position to help the rest of us with their blood plasma. We successfully used transfusions of blood serum containing antibodies to a given disease as a treatment since the late 19th century. And the same process should be a viable option today, because the plasma of patients who have recovered from COVID-19, or any viral illness, is chock-full of antibodies that recognize that virus. SciShow host Hank Green brings us more details on this promising option.

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Will COVID-19 Survive Summer?

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Science says that pandemic viruses, such as COVID-19, don’t spread quite the same way as their established cousins, so the big question facing our crisis: Will the coronavirus be less severe in the summer months or will it intensify? It depends on several factors, including the pattern of humidity in different areas. Studies have consistently found that some viruses have an easier time surviving when the humidity is lower, which makes it easier to pass among people, but researchers don’t really understand why. SciShow’s Hank Green explores COVID-19’s future and the possibility of it becoming a seasonal malady.

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A Peek At Futuristic Medicine

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Modern medicine is wonderful, but even in a world where open-heart surgery and brain-scanning headsets sound almost mundane, some medical advances do truly seem like science fiction. From robot-assisted microsurgery to reanimated organs, host Hank Green brings us five futuristic advancements that are actually around today in this edition of SciShow.

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