Intrepid science enthusiasts from all around the world likely scour YouTube for quick and accessible science content that’s a great partner to your breakfast or next public transportation ride. Of course, Modern Sciences is no stranger to procuring the very best of these videos.
Few perhaps match the immediate presence of Veritasium on the medium. Manned by Derek Muller, the channel covers a vast swath of topics, ranging from physics to YouTube’s content algorithms and even a little bit of psychology on the side. Overall, the channel has remained a hallmark of science YouTube for years, and it shows.
Now, MS has covered the channel multiple times as Derek and his team tackles timely and important topics across all of the sciences; allow us to take you through a short memory lane of his near-recent dabbles into the sciences:
How to Make a Drone That Can Fly on Mars
The historic Ingenuity drone helicopter made waves across the news a few months back, being the very first man-made aircraft to fly in another planet’s atmosphere. The drone has performed several tests under the watchful eye of NASA and the Perseverance rover—but the sheer amount of research and innovations needed to make a helicopter fly in Mars’ atmosphere is so great that it certainly deserves a rewatch.
Black Holes and Rigors of the Scientific Method
LIGO’s detection of colliding black holes is among science’s most recent momentous achievements, and it deserved all its praise back when it was fresh news; the timing couldn’t be any more perfect, and its results add yet another solution to the homework Einstein left behind a century ago.
What Do We Do When an Asteroid Is Headed Our Way?
The most famous asteroid that struck the Earth is probably the one that hit us some 65 million years ago over what is now the Gulf of Mexico; the impactor was so massive and the resulting impact so energetic that it effectively killed around 75% of all life on Earth, including T. rex and its peers. The problem that some would realize is that it’s most certainly not the only extinction-level asteroid out there, and it can come barreling toward Earth when we least expect it. What, if any, can we do to stop these dangerous asteroids?
Imaginary Numbers and a Mathematical Feud
Mathematics may sometimes sound monotonous, but the field hides beneath its complicated-looking veneer some interesting history and astounding discoveries that changed how scientists looked at the universe in general. Here, Veritasium discusses one such revelation involving the field of imaginary numbers.
The (Unseen) Impact of Cosmic Rays
It’s not so obvious when you’re just sitting on your couch scrolling through Modern Sciences, but astronauts up on the International Space Station are very much aware of the dangers posed by space radiation. These rogue bursts of energetic photons can come from truly distant places and actually pose seemingly underrecognized risks to technologies and machines down here on Earth. Watch this to learn about one such instance.
