Find out why this special ice cream stretches like silly putty. It's all in the molecules.

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Collisions between two spiral galaxies can be spectacular affairs, filled with drama and romance. Dr. Barry Rothberg of the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics in Potsdam, details how the massive events play out and why the fate of our own galaxy, the Milky Way, could already be sealed.
Produced by Luke Groskin
Music by Audio Network
Footage and Galaxy Visualizations Courtesy of NASA; ESA; and F. Summers, STScI;
G. Besla, Columbia University; and R. van der Marel, STScI

Patrik Jonsson, Greg Novak and Joel Primack, UC Santa Cruz, 2008
V.Springel, Heidelberg University, Germany
T.J. Cox, Voxer
Phillip Hopkins, California Institute of Technology
Lars Hernquist, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
Large Binocular Telescope Corp., Barry Rothberg and the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics, Potsdam

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Just as humans utilize roads and freeways to move cars and resources around our cities, fungus utilize fluid networks to move nutrients and nuclei through their cells. Dr. Marcus Roper of UCLA explains how these networks function with remarkable efficiency and prevent microscopic traffic jams.
Produced by Christian Baker
Music by Audio Network
Additional Footage Courtesy of Marcus Roper and UCLA

In his home in rural Montana, photographer and biologist Tim Wheeler (http://timwheelerphotography.com ) has lined the walls of his living room with shelf after shelf of lichen specimens. He has gathered these samples from his journeys and he meticulous curates his collection, finding only the most photogenic or unique specimens to profile. Using stacked macro photography, his portraits of lichen transform these dull and ubiquitous organisms into marvels of evolution and vibrant landscapes. With the aid of professional lichenologists, Tim Wheeler hopes to highlight in exquisite detail the amazing diversity of colors and forms that lichens possess
Produced by Luke Groskin
Music by Audio Network
Still Images by Timothy Wheeler

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Footage courtesy of Prelinger Archives, Bernard Wilets' "Discovering Electronic Music"
Music by Ego Plum and Paul Rothman
Produced by Luke Groskin
This video was not sponsored by LittleBits.

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The Tuvan throat-singing band Alash Ensemble has toured the world demonstrating both their cultural heritage as well as their vocal mastery. Their incredible ability to sing low and high notes simultaneously has inspired wonder and a deep appreciation for their craft. But how they achieve these otherworldly sounds hasn't been extensively explored. With the help of speech pathologist Aaron Johnson, we'll look inside the human vocal tract to see how these talented singers create their signature sounds.
Produced by Luke Groskin
Audio Recording by Alexa Lim
Music by Alash Ensemble ( http://www.alashensemble.com )
Additional Stills and Video by
Steve Sklar / Skysong Productions - http://skysongpro.com/
Pond5
NYU Langone Voice Center
The Chevy Chase Show , Fox Network
Special Thanks to Rachel Bouton!

For humans to travel to the Moon and Mars, they'll need a companion - a lowly weed. Just as Matt Damon survives on Mars in The Martian because he cultivates plants in the red planet's hostile conditions, astronauts will need to understand how to grow plants in extreme climates. Dr. Anna-Lisa Paul and Dr. Robert J. Ferl at the University of Florida, Gainesville Space Plants Lab, put weeds in unique situations - like sending them to the International Space Station - to study their behavior on a molecular level. Their research could pave the way for growing plants in extreme climates on Earth, the Moon, long-term space travel, and even Mars.

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You’d think that bats and birds fly in similar ways—in fact, many scientists used to consider bat flight a minor variation of bird flight. But, with the aid of high-speed video, researchers have discovered that bat flight is much more complex than initially thought.
Produced by Luke Groskin
Music by Audio Network
Footage ands Stills
Provided by Kenny Breuer and Sharon Swartz Joe Bahlman, Atilla Bergou, David Boerma, Rhea von Busse, Jorn Cheney, Nick Hristov, Tatjana Hubel, Nicolai Konow, Lauren Reimnitz, Andrea Rummel, Cosima Schunk, Dave Willis, Dan Riskin, Hamid Vejdani.
Bat Research supported by NSF, AFOSR and Brown University
All procedures involving animals were performed in an AAALAC-accredited facility in accordance with the Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals and approved by the Brown University Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee.

Cockroaches are constantly grooming themselves, says entomologist Coby Schal of North Carolina State University. To clean its antenna, a cockroach will grab ahold of it with its front leg, bring the antenna to its mouth, and run the antenna from base to tip through its mandibles like a piece of floss. Publishing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Schal and colleagues investigate the benefits of clean antennae.


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Imagine what you might do if you could print your own solar panels. That's kind of the dream behind Shawn Frayne and Alex Hornstein's Solar Pocket Factory -- although they see it more as the "microbrewery" of panel production rather than a tool for everyone's garage. With over $70,000 of backing from a successful Kickstarter campaign, the inventors are now working on refining the prototype. If all goes well, by April they'll have a machine that can spit out a micro solar panel every few seconds. In the meantime, Frayne stopped by Flora Lichtman's backyard with a few pieces of the prototype to explain how the mini-factory will work.

What high-tech materials are required to make a robotic hand that can pick up almost anything? Coffee grounds and a latex balloon. The design comes from a team of researchers including Heinrich Jaeger of The University of Chicago and John Amend, who is now trying to sell these grippers through Empire Robotics. But you can make your own version at home with some simple materials. The only tricky-to-find object you'll need is a vacuum pump (I got mine from here: https://www.sparkfun.com/products/10398, where you can also find an excellent instructional video).

Water bears, also known as tardigrades, can survive boiling, freezing, the vacuum of space and years of desiccation. Biologist Bob Goldstein, of the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, describes water bears and explains why he studies them.

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Foraging for a meal isn't just a relic of our paleolithic past - it's a growing trend in the local food movement. Guided by professional forager and author, Tama Matsuoka Wong, Science Friday toured western New Jersey's meadows and forested trails to discover the native plants and invasive weeds that are used as culinary delicacies.
Produced by Luke Groskin
Music by Audio Network
Additional Stills by Shala Simbek, Anneli Salo, Tom Woodward, Shutterstock, Waterpenny.net

A few years ago, Science Friday, in collaboration with microbiologist Vince Fischetti and his lab at The Rockefeller University, conducted an experiment looking into a perennial holiday concern: will alcohol kill bacteria in homemade eggnog? We bring you the results. Please note: the sample size in this study is rather small, a single batch of nog.

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Everything is a little bit magnetic, says physicist Richard Hill, of The University of Nottingham. So with a powerful magnet, it is possible to levitate almost anything--strawberries, water, insects. In a recent study, Hill levitated fruit flies to see how they behaved when they didn't have gravity pulling them down.

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Legend holds that the length of woolly bear caterpillar's color bands can be used to forecast how severe the winter weather will be. The myth dates back to colonial American folklore but was popularized by a 1948 study. SciFri finds out if there's any truth to the lore, and what the caterpillar's fuzzy bristles are really used for.

Michael Musnick is a citizen scientist who studies wood turtles in the Great Swamp -- a stretch of wetland about 60 miles north of New York City. He found turtles dying in the railroad tracks and proposed a solution to New York's Metropolitan Transportation Authority: tiny turtle bridges.

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In the past, Olympic ski jumpers typically only had 3 to 4 seconds to practice their form and perfect their mid-air aerodynamics. Physics Professor Adam Johnston, explains how, with the help of a wind tunnel, U.S. ski jumpers can fine tune the physics of their jumps along with the flow of air around their bodies in order to attain Olympic gold.
Produced and filmed by Manjula Varghese
Edited by Manjula Varghese and Luke Groskin
Music by Audionetwork.com

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By looking at a face for less than a second, we can judge someone’s age, gender, race, emotional state and even their trustworthiness. High-speed scanning and perception experiments by social neurologist Dr. Jon Freeman have revealed our brain’s ability to generate character assessments in less than blink of an eye. These first impressions can linger in our brains and influence our real-world interactions.
Produced by Luke Groskin
Music by Audio Network
MRI Stand-in by Sarah Lewin
Footage ands Stills Provided by Dr. Jon Freeman, Shutterstock, Warren Goldswain, Glasgow Unfamiliar Face Database, Bruce Gionet (C.C. 3.0), Nina Paley (C.C. 3.0), Kim Cramer (C.C. 3.0), “Brain Optic Nerve Impulses,” Produced by Purdue University Calumet senior engineering students supervised by Professors Bin Chen, Ph.D, and Ge Jin Ph.D, with support of the university’s Center for Innovation through Visualization and Simulation. Full video is available at: http://webs.purduecal.edu/civs/brain-visualization

Brewing coffee is a never-ending science project, according to barista Sam Penix, owner of Everyman Espresso in New York City. Grind-size, brew method, coffee beans (which are really seeds), water temperature can all affect the flavors that end up in your cup. Harold McGee, author of On Food and Cooking, explains some of the chemistry of coffee.