Videos

We spend nearly a third of our lives asleep, but scientists don't agree on sleep's purpose. Scientific American contributor Joss Fong explains what we know, and don't know, about our nightly slumber.

The Countdown is a biweekly video podcast highlighting the top space news stories from the past two weeks. In this episode: A frigid nebula; Asteroid defense; Dating the arrival of water, A burst of solar flares, and the Tilted Kepler-56 system

How Does Meditation Change the Brain? Meditation can sharpen attention, strengthen memory and improve other mental abilities. Scientific American editor Ferris Jabr examines the changes in brain structure behind some of these benefits.

In the 1980s, the Soviets used an unflown scale space plane to test the heat shield of its Buran space plane.

The Countdown is a biweekly video show highlighting the top space news stories. In this special episode, we countdown the five most bizarre, extreme and just plain weird exoplanets discovered so far.

Scientific American editor Larry Greenemeier explains how lifelike robots and animations can elicit a response that's somewhere between uncomfortable and creeped out.

Contagious yawning can be annoying, but it might also be a sign of good social skills. It is a type of emotional contagion, a phenomenon in which we tend to share the feelings of people around us. SA MIND editor Sandra Upson explains.

The Countdown is a biweekly video podcast highlighting the top space news stories. In this week's episode: Curved Universe, Pluto's Atmosphere, 'Gravity' Fact-Checked, Martian Water and Supervolcanoes on Mars.

Protozoan parasite Toxoplasma gondii rendered mice unafraid of cat odor, even after the infection cleared, according to a study published this week in PLoS ONE. SA contributor Joss Fong reports.

The Countdown is a biweekly video podcast highlighting the top space news stories from the past two weeks. In this week's episode: Voyager hits a milestone, farming on the ISS, the peanut in our galaxy, LADEE launches and shock synthesis.

In the 1970s, the Soviet Union turned its attention to Venus and managed to take the first pictures on the surface of another world with the Venera landers.

At the heart of quantum mechanics is a mysterious equation known as the wave function. It helps explain the behavior of elementary particles, but also challenges the notion that there's only one reality. SA editor Michael Moyer explains.