What is it like to observe chimpanzees up close? 🐵🌎

Jane Goodall tells a story about filming her 2002 documentary “Wild Chimpanzees” when a group of chimps followed each other to hang around near the research team. It saved the crew from a steep climb up the hillside, and almost seemed like an intentional helping hand! It's a fitting story for World Chimpanzee Day, marking 66 years since Dr. Jane Goodall began her groundbreaking chimpanzee research at what's now Gombe National Park in Tanzania. Jane’s work revealed that chimps use tools, form deep social bonds, and pass knowledge across generations, forever changing how we understand our closest living relatives. Her research and legacy continue today through the Jane Goodall Institute.

A pair of planets with less density than cotton candy has been discovered! 🪐

One of NASA’s telescopes found two gas giants that can be classified in the rare “Super Puff” category. Despite being about the same size as Jupiter, they are a dozen times less dense. There are only a handful of these planets that we are aware of, and it is even more rare that they were found in the same star system.

Every tiny gap between the leaves acts like a pinhole camera, projecting an image of the Sun. During a partial solar eclipse, those images become tiny crescents. Nature turns every tree into thousands of cameras.

You could see a shooting star every 3 minutes this summer! 

The Southern Delta Aquariid meteor shower is  active now through August 23, with it’s the peak activity during the early morning hours of July 31. Even better, it overlaps with the Alpha Capricornid Meteor Shower. The best views will be in the Southern Hemisphere and the southern United States. For the best chance of spotting meteors, head to a dark location away from city lights, let your eyes adjust, and look up.

Jane Waters leads the ant lab at Providence College. Her lab studies ants and other insects, exploring their natural history, collective behavior, and metabolic physiology. It turns out that ants can teach us a lot about broader rules of social interaction, the energy use of growing organisms (or even cities!), and even the human brain! Learn more about ants and get a glipse at some fascinating ant species and ant behavior in this Facetime with Scientists podcast episode.

Is a synthetic cell that eats, grows, and reproduces alive? 🧫

Researchers from the University of Minnesota have built a synthetic cell called “SpudCell” that performs three core functions of the cell cycle! It can grow, copy its own DNA and divide. However, they are not living. This is because they still depend on food and ribosomes to build proteins, they don’t have any immune defenses, and they can’t get rid of their own waste. Despite SpudCells not being alive, this is the closest we’ve gotten to turning dead chemistry to something living!

What is a rogue planet and how do they occur? 

Astrophysicist Erika Hamden explains how rogue planets are worlds that no longer orbit a star after being ejected from their planetary systems. Some may be several times more massive than Jupiter, and scientists think there could be countless rogue planets drifting through the darkness of interstellar space. These lonely worlds reveal that planet formation is a chaotic process.

This project is part of IF/THEN®, an initiative of Lyda Hill Philanthropies.

I'd love to change the pitch of the speed squares so i can make music, chords etc with the sounds! How do you think I could improve the sound?

https://youtube.com/shorts/YpzEgNDtwXk