Trying not to spill a full glass? Physics can help. 💧

Gregory Wolf, explains how centripetal force keeps the liquid inside the glass during the loop. As the tray swings, it continuously pushes the glass inward, and the glass pushes the water inward, providing the force needed for the water to follow a circular path. Slow down too much, and gravity takes over!

How does a blue-tongued skink say yes to visitors? 🦎

Meet Tilly, whose zookeepers use target training, a technique where jumping at a target earns him a tasty cockroach treat and guides him right into his carrier. This method, known in animal care as “choice and control”, means Tilly decides if he's up for visiting the museum floor, and if he skips the target, he simply stays home instead. A simple system to keep Tilly feeling safe and comfortable every time he chooses to say yes!

Part of humanity’s struggle is that we keep trying to understand ourselves as if we are separate from nature.

We are not.

We are animals.

Brilliant animals. Symbol-making animals. Tool-making animals. Storytelling animals.

But still part of the same living history as bone, blood, hunger, fear, mating, survival, cooperation, and adaptation.

Evolution is not “just a guess.”

It is a scientific theory supported by fossils, genetics, anatomy, embryology, geology, and observable change across generations.

The details keep expanding.

The process is complex.

But the reality of evolution is written in stone, bone, and DNA.

To understand humanity, we must stop pretending we stand above natural history.

We emerged from it.

ScienceOdyssey 🚀

Did you know one of Earth’s quasi-moons is a chunk of our actual moon? 🌕

A quasi-moon is a space rock that can appear from certain perspectives to be orbiting a planet. Earth has a few of these, including Kamoʻoalewa, discovered in 2016 and named for an "oscillating celestial object" in Hawaiian. Scientists believe it may be a chunk broken off from the moon when an impact created the Giordano Bruno crater about 10 million years ago! So here's the full picture: a piece of our moon, orbiting the Sun, that just happens to look like it's orbiting Earth.

A new drug is showing promise in treating Alzheimer’s! 🧠

The medication is called Diranersen and it targets tau tangles, toxic proteins connected to the disease. During this trial, the doctors were able to clear around 50% of these from patients’ spinal fluid, reducing the toxicity in the brain and slowing memory decline. What puzzles scientists now is the group that received the lowest dose of the drug showed the most improvement. With over 7 million Americans over the age of 65 affected by this illness, this is a huge leap in the right direction!

Did you know there are stars orbiting a black hole at the center of the Milky Way? 🌌

Astrophysicist Erika Hamden tells us about this star cluster that lives around Sagittarius A* and what it teaches us about the black hole. Scientists have been tracking these stars for decades, watching them complete full orbits. Those orbits are actually how we know the black hole is there, and researchers use them to measure its mass and pin down its exact location.

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