Understanding the mechanisms for planet-building compels us to look out to young stars. The leftovers from star formation are the raw materials for planets, and in young solar systems astronomers look for analogues of our own early Solar System. Hear how astronomers learn about nascent planetary systems and the processes that sculpt them.
Life’s origins occurred as a dynamic sequence of events, each of which added complexity and structure to the emerging living world. By what chemical processes did water, air, and rock combine to form a living entity?
Life displays a stunning diversity of forms, from the single cell to the whole organism. Learn how advanced imaging technology and other tools enable biologists to visualize and investigate the behaviors of dynamic proteins as they organize plant cells and guide their construction.
Why is the universe so flat and so uniform? Why are there faint ripples in the cosmic background radiation—the afterglow of the big bang? Find out how the inflationary universe theory can explain these otherwise mysterious features, and how it can even explain the origin of essentially all matter.
In humans, smell is often viewed as an aesthetic sense, a sense capable of eliciting enduring thoughts and memories. For most organisms, however, smell is the primal sense. The genetics of olfaction have recently revealed how we recognize the vast repertoire of odors and how these odors are represented in the brain.
The world will soon start to run out of cheap oil. It won’t be the end of oil—there will still be plenty of it in the ground—but supplies will start to be depleted faster than new oil can be produced. This historic change will affect every part of the global oil economy, with results that are difficult to predict.
Our home planet and its nearest celestial neighbor, the Moon, have a coupled history. It is believed that in the final stages of Earth’s formation it collided with another planet-sized object and produced our Moon. Learn about the origin of Earth and its moon, and the repercussions this event continues to have on our planet today.
