The Nobel Prize for physics in 2011 was awarded to Brian Schmidt, Adam Riess, and Saul Perlmutter for discovering that the universe is expanding at an accelerating rate. This finding was completely unexpected because it was thought that gravity should slow the expansion of the cosmos. The best current explanation of why the universe is accelerating is that there is some energy tied to empty space which pushes matter apart. This 'Dark Energy' makes up 73% of the universe but is very difficult to detect. Images courtesy of NASA/NASAimages.org and Maritza A. Lara-Lopez

Do we take the Earth for granted? It gives us life and sustains us in the manner we're accustomed to, but we don't know the first thing about it: like where did it come from? And how did it form? Most people recognize that the Earth has a big explosion in its history, which they refer to descriptively as the 'Big Bang.' But there are two very good reasons why the Big Bang is not directly responsible for forming the Earth: 1) It happened 13.7 billion years ago. That's more than 9 billion years before the Earth formed (what happened during that time?), and 2) After the Big Bang the universe consisted of only Hydrogen and Helium - not great raw material for building the Earth. The truth is the big bang formed stars, which exploded and then (perhaps) formed more stars, which exploded and then formed our solar system, including the Earth. The early stars performed the vital role of making the heavier elements of which Earth is composed and we are made.

Force is a central concept in physics. By analysing the forces on an object, its resulting motion can be determined. But what exactly is a force? The word force is used in everyday language in a variety of contexts, only some of which reflect the scientific definition of force. In this video, people at Victoria Park in Sydney are interviewed on their ideas of force and the forces that act on them.

Apollo astronauts trained in nuclear bomb craters at the Nevada National Security Site. But why?Thanks Audible! Start listening with a 30-day trial and your first audiobook plus two Audible Originals free when you go to http://audible.com/veritasium or text veritasium to 500500

I found this story fascinating because in a way a nuclear bomb crater is more like a meteorite impact site than an impact site itself. Consider: Barringer Crater was claimed to be a meteorite impact site but geologists dismissed it as a volcanic formation. It was only after studying nuclear bomb craters and the minerals found there that geologists concluded the energy and pressures that created Barringer Crater were too high to be from volcanic activity and therefore must have formed from a meteorite impact.

Special Thanks to:
Nevada National Security Site
The National Atomic Testing Museum
Jonny Hyman and Verse: https://youtu.be/7bUUGzi-AAY
Active Galactic for footage of craters in Arizona: https://youtu.be/yhoooBpndog

Special thanks to Patreon supporters:
a human, Alfred Wallace, Arjun Chakroborty, Brent Stewart, Bryan Baker, Chris Vargas, Chuck Lauer Vose, Clip Tree, Coale Shifflett, Colin Bellmore, DALE HORNE, Daniel Milum, Donal Botkin, Eric Velazquez, Illya Nayshevsky, James Knight, James Wong, Jasper Xin, Joar Wandborg, Johnny, June Kang, Kevin Beavers, kkm, Leah Howard, Listen Money Matters, Lyvann Ferrusca, Manuel Zürcher, Mathias Göransson, Michael Bradley Wirz, Michael Krugman, Mohammed Al Sahaf, OddJosh, Philipp Volgger, Pindex, Roberto Rezende, Robin DeBank, Ron Neal, Sam Lutfi, Stan Presolski, Tige Thorman, Warrior8252

Filmed by Raquel Nuno
Story and Editing by Derek Muller and Jonny Hyman
Music and Animation by Jonny Hyman
Produced by Casey Rentz

Thank you to Rodney Fox for sharing his story. He was attacked by a shark 50 years ago - Dec. 8 1963. If you're interested in his book or in going shark cage diving in South Australia, check out: http://bit.ly/rodneyfox

This fungus lives on your scalp and may affect the genes you express.
Check out Head & Shoulders research on getting rid of dandruff: https://ve42.co/HS

Animation by Pindex: https://ve42.co/pindex

When I started this project, I wasn't sure what caused dandruff and I also didn't think much science would go into making a shampoo like Head & Shoulders. So what I learned really surprised me:

There are hundreds of scientists working on this shampoo. They run crazy-sounding experiments like hanging hair near Tokyo highways to understand how real-world environments deposit dirt on hair. They use sophisticated scientific techniques like electron microscopes, nuclear magnetic resonance and gene sequencing to study dandruff on the molecular level.

In fact they sequenced the entire genome of Malassezia globosa in 2002, one year after the human genome project. Their findings are published in international refereed journals. What they have found is that the Malassezia fungi create free fatty acids as byproducts of their digestion, which for some people create irritation and lead to hyper-proliferation of skin cells, flaking, histamines, inflammatory cytokines, and blood proteins reaching the surface of the skin. These findings indicate the unhealthiness of dandruff scalp and suggest a possible remedy - controlling the metabolism of the Malassezia fungi. This is achieved using different active ingredients in different products and different parts of the world, including zinc pyrithione, selenium sulfide, and piroctone olamine. With the reduction of irritants, the scalp actually expresses different genes, producing a signature more similar to a non-dandruff baseline scalp.

Music from Epidemic Sound: http://epidemicsound.com
Music also by Kevin MacLeod: http://incompetech.com

Grant Thompson - the King of Random - teaches me how to start a fire with a Sandwich bag. And we tried to melt glass in my backyard: https://goo.gl/zb0uE0
Check out his channel: http://ve42.co/KoR

The intensity of sunlight on Earth is about 1300 Watts per square meter. When you focus the sun's rays using a magnifying glass (or in this case sphere of water) you can increase the intensity roughly ten thousand fold. This increases the temperature of wood to its autoignition point starting the reaction with oxygen in the atmosphere. By protecting the hot embers and adding more energy and fuel, you can get these hot coals to start a roaring fire.

Special thanks to Patreon Supporters:
Tony Fadell, Donal Botkin, Jeff Straathof, Zach Mueller, Ron Neal, Nathan Hansen

Support Veritasium on Patreon: http://ve42.co/patreon

Veritasium second channel: http://bit.ly/2Veritasium
Rodney Fox Shark Attack Story: http://bit.ly/1frAwlI
Check out Audible: http://bit.ly/AudibleVe

For this video I went off the coast of South Australia to an island frequented by great white sharks. Here they hunt seals and fish. I've never been scuba diving before but I got into a cage and filmed the sharks under water. It was an incredible experience. Then we came back on the surface to tag the sharks.

Everyone is familiar with liquid water, ice and water vapour, but what are the differences between these three states of matter? Solids, liquids and vapours of the same substance differ in the motion of the molecules and the distance between them.

Animations courtesy of VisChem (Trade Mark), Copyright 1995, Roy Tasker. Thanks for all your help!

We talk about all the potentially challenging situations autonomous cars could get into but not about how human drivers are not very good. Tens of thousands die on the roads every year in collisions, most of which could be prevented by autonomous vehicles.
Sponsored by BMW

I wanted to make a video about autonomous cars for some time but I hadn't had the opportunity. The self-driving technology is already at a state where it can save lives if only it were more widely implemented.

Links to original clips:
TED-Ed https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixIoDYVfKA0
BBC Newsnight: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FypPSJfCRFk&t=172s

Music from http://www.epidemicsound.com "Ambient Electronic Groove," "Pet Animals 2," "The Long Ride."
Filmed by Raquel Nuno
Edited by Trevor Carlee

Objects hang heavy side down, but what happens when you spin an asymmetrically weighted disk - well the heavy part actually rises to the top. Why is this?

Origami is inspiring a plethora of new engineering designs. Try yourself: https://ve42.co/Origami
Thanks Audible! Start listening with a 30-day trial and your first audiobook, plus two Audible Originals free when you go to https://audible.com/veritasium or text veritasium to 500500

Huge thanks to:
Dr. Robert Lang https://langorigami.com
Prof. Larry Howell https://www.compliantmechanisms.byu.edu/

On first glance it's surprising that origami -- a centuries old art of folding paper to achieve particular aesthetics -- is applicable to engineering. But upon closer consideration there are a lot of reasons methods developed for paper folding are also applicable to engineering: origami allows you to take a flat sheet of material and convert it to almost any shape only by folding. Plus for large flat structures, origami provides a way of shrinking dimensions while ensuring simply deployment - this is particularly useful for solar arrays in space applications. Furthermore, motions designed to take advantage of the flexibility of paper can also be used to form compliant mechanisms for engineering like the kaleidocycle. Since the principles of origami are scalable, mechanisms can also be dramatically miniaturized.

Some of the work shown is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research under Grant No. EFRI-ODISSEI-1240417. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

Special thanks to Patreon supporters:
Alfred Wallace, Arjun Chakroborty, Bryan Baker, Chris Vargas, Chuck Lauer Vose, DALE HORNE, Donal Botkin, halyoav, James Knight, Jasper Xin, Joar Wandborg, Kevin Beavers, kkm, Leah Howard, Lyvann Ferrusca, Michael Krugman, Noel Braganza, Pindex, Ron Neal, Sam Lutfi, Stan Presolski, Tige Thorman

Edited by
Jonny Hyman, Isaac Frame, and Derek Muller

Music by
Jonny Hyman

On mobile, click here for the answer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQCVnjGUv24

When ice is put under pressure, its melting point decreases. When that pressure is removed it goes back to being solid. This process is known as 'regelation'. In this experiment regelation of ice is attempted with copper wire and fishing line of the same diameter. Which will pass through the ice first?

Scientific research has shown that heterosexual males and females find members of the opposite sex more attractive when they wear the colour red. This is a subconscious preference that seems to have some evolutionary basis. We attempted to replicate these findings in Sydney but our methods were much less controlled and the results achieved were not statistically significant.

To celebrate the announcement of the discovery of a particle consistent with the Higgs Boson at the LHC, I took to the streets with Vi Hart to give out free Higgs. Now giving out a subatomic particle, especially the Higgs, would have been incredibly difficult so instead we gave out hand-drawn cards of the Standard Model, our current best theory of all matter particles in the universe and their iteractions (now with Higgs!). We also offered a hug with an integer spin, usually 1 or 2 (and in rare cases 0). This is a way of showing others that you care about the Higgs Boson.

Newton's Three Laws of Motion are a landmark achievement in physics. They describe how all objects move. Unfortunately most people do not really understand Newton's Laws because they have pre-existing ideas about the way the world works. This film is about those pre-existing ideas. By recognizing what people are thinking, it becomes easier to describe the correct scientific concepts of Newton's Three Laws and how they differ from this 'intuitive physics'.

Electric cars are now ready to take over thanks to advances in battery technology and their inherent benefits: torque, handling, maintenance. This video was sponsored by BMW: https://www.bmwusa.com/

Full disclosure: I drive an #electric #car. I think electric cars are the future, not mainly because they're better for the environment (which they are if you drive the car for any reasonable length of time) but because they are just better cars. The have better torque and acceleration, better handling, they're more efficient, quieter, they don't smell, they're cheaper to run and best of all you never have to visit a gas station - this appeals to me. I never have to worry about being low on gas because every morning my car is charged and ready to go - just like my phone and laptop. And if you're worried about range, don't. Almost all trips can already be done in an electric car with modest battery pack. And fast chargers along the way make it possible to do longer road trips if necessary. You have to make rest stops anyway, just time them with the charging. And consider that battery tech is getting dramatically cheaper, smaller, lighter. All these reasons are why I see the #future of cars as electric.

Writing & Research
Derek Muller
Jonny Hyman
Matthew Shribman https://ve42.co/sciencebath

Editing, Animation, Audio, & Music:
Jonny Hyman

Camerawork:
Raquel Nuno
Jonny Hyman

1890s Music "National fantasie" by William Paris Chambers, archived in Library of Congress
#BMWUSA #NEXTGen #BMWPartner #ad

Do we need more diversity in online video?
NOTE: the free one-year membership offer has now expired. You can receive a free month trial at: http://vessel.com/science
Watch the MinutePhysics announcement: http://bit.ly/1GbKtTi

Thanks to Whole Foods UCLA for allowing us to film their potatoes and Zach T for filming.

NASA is preparing to send a chimpanzee, Ham, into space to test the effects of space on a living creature. He’s received a training regiment to prepare him for the mission ahead.

From the Series: Apollo's Moon Shot: Rocket Fever http://bit.ly/2MHAm4y

How do we study black holes if we can’t even see them? Could a black hole “eat” an entire galaxy? What would happen if you fell into a black hole? Join experts on #NASAScience Live as we take a journey to explore these mysterious objects that can be found all over the universe.