SSS 2010-12-09

This is Scientific Americans 60-Second Science. Im Christopher Intagliata. Got a minute? Imagine climbing diamond mountains, or hiking around the graphite shores of a lake of tar. Sound a little sci-fi? Well a new discovery suggests planets like that

SSS 2011-10-10

This is Scientific American's 60-Second Science. I'm John Matson. Got a minute? Earth's surface is dominated by oceans. But where did all that water come from? Asteroids and comets smashing into the early Earth have long been thought to be a promisin

SSS 2011-11-18

On November 8th, Russia launched a probe toward the tiny Martian moon Phobos. The launch was picture-perfect, and the spacecraft, called PhobosGrunt, soared into the night sky over Kazakhstan. The good news stops there. For instead of boosting itself

SSS 2011-07-04

This is Scientific American's 60-Second Science. I'm Steve Mirsky at the Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting in Lindau Germany.This will just take a little more time than our usual minute. Why do I talk so much on money, when I'm a professor public health?

SSS 2011-06-08

You shouldn't judge a book by its cover, and you shouldn't judge a species by place of its origin, so say ecologists in the commentary in the Journal Nature. They argued that conservation should access organisms based on their impact on the local env

SSS 2011-06-01

This is Scientific American's 60-Second Science. I'm Karen Hopkin. This will just take a minute. Meatloaf, mac-and-cheese or a big bowl of mashed potatoes. We all have our comfort foods. Except for people with anorexia. Food makes them extremely unco

SSS 2011-05-16

This is Scientific American's 60-Second Science. I'm Karen Hopkin. This will just take a minute. If you want to guess how many jelly beans are in a jar, you should ask your friends. Then average their answers. Because a group guess is often more accu

SSS 2011-05-06

This is Scientific American's 60-Second Science. I'm Karen Hopkin. This will just take a minute. Albert Einstein wins again. A new study has confirmed another prediction of his theory of general relativity. The corroboration appears online in the jou

SSS 2011-09-06

This is Scientific Americans 60-Second Science. Im Cynthia Graber. This will just take a minute. Labor Days over, and Americans fortunate enough to have jobs are getting back to work. But all work and no play might make us, well, less productive. Tha

SSS 2011-08-10

Invasive species get a bad rapbut we humans are usually to blame for their spread. Take Japanese stiltgrass, an invasive that arrived from Asia nearly 100 years ago as a packing material for porcelain. When it creeps into forests, it forms dense carp

SSS 2011-08-02

Plants are sitting ducks for every hungry herbivore that wanders past. But for some greens, a little grazing is the best thing that can happen. They grow back faster and fuller and make more seeds than they would have if left alone. Now scientists kn

SSS 2011-02-07

Patients undergoing coronary bypass surgery need implants of new, healthy blood vessels. So do those who receive repeated hemodialysis due to kidney failure. The best option is to use the patient's own veins or arteries, but thousands of patients don

SSS 2011-03-02

This is Scientific American's 60-Second Science. I'm Karen Hopkin. This will just take a minute. They say that love is blind. And that's probably for the best. Because a new study shows that people who greatly idealize their spouses have the happiest

SSS 2011-02-11

This is Scientific American's 60-Second Science. I'm Karen Hopkin. This will just take a minute. Ahhh, the great outdoors. Great for your health, too. Because studies suggest that the more we visit local parks, the more fit we are. Researchers at Pen

SSS 2011-01-05

This is Scientific American's 60-Second Science. I'm Karen Hopkin. This will just take a minute. January often gets people thinking about what they've accomplished over the past 12 months. This year, it got the editors of the medical journal the Lanc

SSS 2011-01-06

This is Scientific Americans 60-Second Science, Im Cynthia Graber. This will just take a minute. We produce tears in response to insults to the eyesthe sting of onion fumes, a tiny insect that flew into your cornea. But we also produce emotional tear

SSS 2011-01-12

This is Scientific American's 60-Second Science. I'm Karen Hopkin. This will just take a minute. Remember affirmations? Because I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and doggonit, people like me. Well, if Stuart Smalley's shot-in-the-arm makes you smile

SSS 2011-01-13

This is Scientific Americans 60-Second Science. Im Christie Nicholson. Got a minute? Performance anxiety can be crippling. Entertainers who suffer from it come up with creative defenses. Bono has his purple shades. The indie rock singer Cat Power fac

SSS 2012-08-13

Elephants dont need cell phones to hold long distance conversations, their deep calls can travel miles. And although humans cant always hear these vocalizations because of their low frequency, elephants produce them using the same mechanism that lets

SSS 2012-08-07

This is scientific American sixty seconds science. I'm Christopher Intagliata. Got minute? You've probably noticed you're more likely to catch a cold if you pull a lot of all-nighters. But lack of sleep can also compromise your immune system's respon