Reporting in the journal Nature Physics, William Irvine and Dustin Kleckner, physicists at the University of Chicago, describe the knotted fluid vortex they created in the lab -- a scientific first, they say. The knots resemble smoke rings -- except these are made of water, and they're shaped like pretzels, not donuts. Understanding knottiness has extra-large applications, including untangling dynamics of the sun.

More SciFri videos

Untangling the Hairy Physics of Rapunzel: http://www.sciencefriday.com/s....egment/04/20/2012/un
Dive Into the Physics of Splashing: http://www.sciencefriday.com/v....ideo/02/06/2009/dive
Cracking the Egg Sprinkler Mystery: http://www.sciencefriday.com/v....ideo/05/04/2012/crac

Coffee beans are filled with oils that emerge from coffee grounds under high pressure. These oils form the crema—the frothy stuff on top of an espresso. In the last installment of Science Friday's series on coffee, food-science writer Harold McGee, author of On Food and Cooking, explains the chemistry of crema.

Video by Jenny Woodward

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Musk oxen are not the only charismatic creatures perfectly suited to the wind-blasted, tundra of the Alaskan Arctic. Meet Joel Berger, Wildlife Conservation Society senior scientist, Colorado State University professor - as well as expert on hoofed mammals. In addition to gathering photos to track how fast musk oxen are growing, Berger conducts a seemingly hazardous test: He dresses up as a grizzly bear, approaches the herd, and gauges their reactions. Berger uses this unusual technique to find out whether the presence of more male oxen makes the herd safer from bears.
Produced by Luke Groskin
Filmed by Christian Baker and Luke Groskin
Music by Audio Network
Production Assistance and Guide by Erik Snuggerud
Additional Stills and Video by the Joel Berger/WCS , Shutterstock , Musk Oxen Hunt shots © GSSafaris
Special Thanks to Joel Berger, Erik Snuggarud, Ellen Cheng, Jenny Shalant, and Jessica Brunetto

NOTE: This is a 360/VR video but you do not a VR viewer to experience the 360 viewpoint- just click around the video!
In 1977, NASA launched Voyager 1 and 2 to explore and document our solar system and the interstellar space beyond. The craft will drift for billions of years in the emptiness, each carrying a Golden Record inscribed with our message to any intelligent spacefaring civilization that discovers it.
Produced by Luke Groskin
VR/360 Direction by Jason Drakeford
Narrated by Annie Nero
Music by
Audio Network
Dark Was the Night – Blind Willie Johnson
Tchenhoukoumen – Charles Duvelle
Original Golden Record Images and Diagrams
F.D. Drake, Carl Sagan, Ann Druyan, NASA, United Nations, Hale Observatory,
Wayne Miller/ Magnum Photos, David Harvey / Woodfin Camp Inc.,
1955 Life Magazine © Time Inc. 1947
The Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum
The World Book Encyclopedia © Harper & Row Publishers Inc.
Ruby Mera / UNICEF, David Carroll, Stephen Dalton
F. D. Drake, Herman Eckelmann/ NAIC, Jon Lomberg
Gaston Rebuffat, Ray Manley/ Shostal Associates,
Isaac Newton, Lennart Nilsson, David Wickstrom
National Geographic Society Images
H. Edward Kim, William Albert Allard, Gordon W. Grahan,
James P. Blair, Thomas Nebbia, David Doubilet, Donna Grosvenor,
Joseph Scherschel, Goerge F. Mobley, Jodi Cobb

http://www.sciencefriday.com
In a basement laboratory at the University of Pennsylvania, two roboticists have harnessed the innate sensing, swimming, and swarming abilities of bacteria to power microscopic robots. Even though their work sounds like the prologue to a dark science fiction film, Ph.D. students Elizabeth Beattie and Denise Wong hope these initial experiments with nano bio-robots will provide a platform for future medical and micro-engineering endeavors.
Produced by Luke Groskin
Music by Audio Network
Footage ands Stills Provided by
Elizabeth Beattie
Denise Wong
Edward Steager
Prelinger Archives
Quentin Lindsey, Daniel Mellinger, and Vijay Kumar,
University of Pennsylvania’s GRASP Lab

Go into Jason Hackenwerth's studio and watch him bend balloons into giant flowers.

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.

When Tim White isn't hunting for the remains of our ancestors or working on those fossil-finds at the National Museum of Ethiopia, he's stationed in a museum-like office at the University of California, Berkeley, where he directs the Human Evolution Research Center. From snake skins to ancient skulls, White's office is not short on artifacts.

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“If you're a cephalopod, you're super easy to eat,” says Sarah McAnulty, a squid biologist. “You're basically a swimming protein bar.” McAnulty studies a species of cephalopod called the Hawaiian bobtail squid. While most cephalopods have flashy adaptations to stay off predators’ dinner menus this particular squid relies on something that many other cephalopods don’t—its bacteria BFF.



Produced by Luke Groskin
Edited by Erika Sutter
Music by Audio Network
Additional Footage and Stills Provided by Sarah McAnulty, Nyholm Lab, Pond5
Sacrificial Hemocyte Research Conducted by the Ruby-McFall-Ngai Lab

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Brett Grasse lovingly calls the Cephalopod Operations division at the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) the “cephalopod empire.” The lab in Woods Hole, Massachusetts houses roughly 2,000 to 3,000 cephalopods—likely the largest collection of cephalopods of any research laboratory. And it’s possible that one day, these creatures will be as ubiquitous in labs as mice or fruit flies.

Produced by Luke Groskin
Music by Audio Network
Additional Footage and Stills Provided by Bret Grasse and Taylor Sakmar

http://www.sciencefriday.com
For many of us, there are few creatures more nefarious and loathsome as leeches. But do these parasites deserve their bad reputation as mindless bloodsuckers? Dr. Mark Siddall a.k.a. "The Leech Guy," exposes our many misconceptions of these carnivorous worms and details his on-going research at the American Museum of Natural History into each species' unique cocktail of anti-clotting blood poisons.
Produced by Luke Groskin
Music by Audio Network
Additional Footage and Stills by Dr. Mark Siddall Shutterstock, Derek Morisson (C.C. 3.0), Alan Kuehner (C.C. 3.0), Rebecca VO (C.C. 3.0) Leo Kenney / Vernal Pool Association Steven Johnson, William Moser, Landcare Research – Manaaki Whenua

It's crunch time for the 'balloonatics' at Macy's Parade Studio. The balloons themselves, which are designed and fabricated in a warehouse in New Jersey, are getting their final checkup before the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. John Piper and Jim Artle take us around the studio and spill the secrets of inflation, explain how to calculate whether your balloon will float, and explain why the balloons look better after a little time in the sun. (Broadcast Nov 2011)

Please support our video productions: http://www.patreon.com/scifri

The idea of mining Mars, the moon, or an asteroid for its mineral or water resources isn't far-fetched. NASA, the ESA, and several commercial enterprises already have missions in various stages of planning - all to test technologies and probe off-planet terrain for resource extraction. But before you go and land your finely-tuned space drill on an asteroid and suck out the water and carbon, you need to test it out here on earth. And before you do that, you need something to stand in for the rocks and soil of these interplanetary bodies. Using existing data from previous missions, a pinch of geology and chemistry, and and whole lot of jerry-rigged pressure cookers, researchers at Deep Space Industries are cooking up these simulants by the bucket full.
Produced by Luke Groskin
Music by Audio Network
Videography and Production Assistance by Brook Eschenroeder
Additional Videos, Stills and Animations by Shutterstock, Brandon Swanson, Deep Space Industries, Brian Versteeg, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Kennedy Space Flight Center, Goddard Space Flight, Johnson Space Center, Resource Prospector Mission , JAXA Hayabusa Mission, European Space Agency
Special Thanks to Philip Metzger, Danielle Dana and Ariel Zych

They look cuddly, but don't be fooled: red-eyed treefrogs (Agalychnis callidryas) have a secret dark side. When Michael Caldwell, of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, filmed the frogs under infrared light he saw a behavior had hadn't seen before -- the frogs started vigorously shaking the branches they were sitting on. Caldwell and colleagues, decode the meaning of the shakes.

Big and boisterous, Spotigy and Buri appear to be standard 1-year-old bulls. But a quick glance at their furry heads and closer examination of their genes would reveal that they're unique specimens—hornless Holsteins. The bulls are the result of a gene-editing experiment by Alison Van Eenennaam and colleagues at UC Davis, along with researchers at the biotech company Recombinetics, who aim to develop hornless cattle that might one day replace cows whose horns must be physical removed through expensive and painful methods. Van Eenennaam explains how the technique of "precision breeding" can be a faster and more effective means of de-horning cows compared to traditional breeding methods.
Produced by Luke Groskin
Music by Audio Network
Filmed by Christian Baker
and Luke Groskin

Additional Stills and Video by
Shutterstock
Pond5
Jack Wakeham (C.C. BY 3.0)
Cornell Alliance for Science

This summer, the #SciFriBookClub   is reading Tracy Kidder’s 1981 true-tech tale of computer engineering heroism, The Soul of a New Machine. Join three of the engineers profiled in Soul, as they remember the effort to bring  ‘Eagle’ to life. Ask a question using the Google Hangout Q&A feature, or tweet using the hashtag #SciFriBookClub  

Learn more about #SciFriBookClub  at http://sciencefriday.com/bookclub

Can you predict which song is going to be a hit? The answer may be yes.

In 1953, James Watson and Francis Crick pieced together the structure of DNA — the now-famous double helix. To celebrate the release of a new annotated and illustrated edition of his 1968 book, The Double Helix, James Watson reflects on the groundbreaking discovery. Broadcast Nov. 16, 2012.

Listen to the full interview: http://bit.ly/Sx0s2A

At the Northeast Mycological Federation's 36th Annual Foray, some 15 crafty people learned how to use wool roving to create a mushroom-themed felt pillow. Cornelia Cho, a pediatrician and the president of the Mushroom Club of Georgia led the class. Meet Cho and her fellow felters, and get a taste of mushroom needle-felting technique, in the video below.

Join Science Friday for a live online discussion on April 28th at 6 p.m. EST to discuss strategies for addressing resistance to evolution instruction from students, staff, parents, and the community. Inspired by "The Pot-Stirrer," a video by Science Friday's The Macroscope, this panel will bring together experienced science educators from across the country to answer your questions about evolution in the classroom. Panelists will share their approach to introducing evolution concepts, classroom and community strategies for coping with resistance, and favorite evolution curriculum resources. Come as you are, and bring questions, ideas, and resources of your own to share in this Google Hangout On Air.