Cafe Science

Is teleportation possible? Could a baseball transform into something like a radio wave, travel through buildings, bounce around corners, and change back into a baseball? Oddly enough, thanks to quantum mechanics, the answer might actually be yes... sort of! Sajan Saini explains.

Scientists have discovered how to create a real life 'superlaser' using an ultra-pure diamond. How exactly does it work?2

The light from KIC 8462852 faded again, and scientists have some new theories about what's behind astronomy's most mysterious star.

The Impossible Burger is meatless, but it tastes, smells, and bleeds like the real thing. The secret ingredient? Neuroscience.

The nose's olfactory receptors are stimulated when we smell food and other odors. But could the process of smelling cause weight gain?

The bee population has dropped dramatically and Michael Waite is taking matters into his own hands with a scheme to inseminate Queen bees.

This video is about why it's harder to successfully land spacecraft and landers and rovers on Mars than on Earth, or Venus, or the Moon, or Titan, or asteroids. It all comes down to atmospheric density! When there's no atmosphere, you can do a powered descent in a flimsy tinfoil spacecraft like the Lunar Module, and when there's plenty of atmosphere you can do an unpowered descent via heat shield and parachutes like the space shuttle, Apollo command module, Soyuz, Huygens, etc. But on Mars with its thin air, you have to do both powered & unpowered descent, getting the worst of both worlds.

Glacier ice is weird. It's solid. Solid things aren't supposed to flow. But glacier ice flows like a liquid, and it does that without melting! How is this possible? I traveled to Mendenhall Glacier in Juneau, Alaska to find out.

Researchers at Stanford University developed a soft, squishy robot that "grows" like a vine and can squeeze through tight spaces. It can also lift heavy objects, which makes it potentially ideal for search-and-rescue operations.

The giant crack that's been racing across Antarctica Larsen C ice shelf finally met its breaking point between July 10 and 12. The result was an iceberg the size of Delaware and weighing a trillion metric tons.

Why Christopher Nolan is obsessed with Shepard tones.

Each year in the United States, players of sports and recreational activities receive between 2.5 and 4 million concussions. How dangerous are all those concussions? The answer is complicated and lies in how the brain responds when something strikes it. Clifford Robbins explains the science behind concussions.

They're not just an animal, they're a material. And that's got engineers interested.

Scientists think they've found the molecular basis for organ transplant rejection. Now that we know its cause, could we prevent its effect?

Many have tried to keep a white shark in captivity. Here's why that's so difficult.

The human brain is visibly split into a left and right side. This structure has inspired one of the most pervasive ideas about the brain: that the left side controls logic and the right side controls creativity. And yet, this is a myth, unsupported by scientific evidence. So how did this idea come about, and what does it get wrong? Elizabeth Waters looks into this long held misconception.

1, 11, 21, 1211, 111221. These are the first five elements of a number sequence. Can you figure out what comes next? Alex Gendler reveals the answer and explains how beyond just being a neat puzzle, this type of sequence has practical applications as well.

Over 100,000 metric tons of caffeine are consumed around the world every year. That's equivalent to the weight of 14 Eiffel Towers! Caffeine helps us feel alert, focused, and energetic, even if we haven't had enough sleep - but it can also raise our blood pressure and make us feel anxious. So how does it keep us awake? Hanan Qasim shares the science behind the world's most widely used drug.

Finding the source of a disease outbreak requires intensive detective work from health experts. But is finding Patient Zero even possible?

Even though there is no scientific evidence that ghosts exist, you may not be crazy if you see one.

Many structures built by ancient Romans around 2,000 years ago are still standing, and some are still in excellent condition. Over the last decade, researchers have come discover the Romans' secret concrete recipe that has maintained so many of its now-ancient buildings.