Get curated editors’ picks, peeks behind the scenes, film recommendations and more.
In this brief yet expansive science lesson, the UK physicist and science educator Brian Cox explores how ‘each snowflake is a microcosm of the laws of physics’. Narrating over charming paper cut-out animation, Cox details a snowflake’s journey from its birth in the clouds to its final melting place, as well as how Johannes Kepler’s theory about their hexagonal shape would take some four centuries to be proved correct. Connecting the structure of these small ice crystals to that of spiral galaxies, this riveting dive into the natural laws that govern all things great and small will almost surely make you see the humble snowflake anew.
Video by The Royal Society
video
Technology and the self
A filmmaker finds a tactile beauty in the creation of her prosthetic leg
11 minutes
video
Knowledge
An Indigenous myth and a geological survey elicit two ways of knowing one place
4 minutes
video
Biology
Beetles take flight at 6,000 frames per second in this perspective-shifting short
9 minutes
video
War and peace
A war meteorologist’s riveting account of how the Allies averted a D-Day disaster
6 minutes
video
Physics
What does it look like to hunt for dark matter? Scenes from one frontier in the search
7 minutes
video
Biology
An elegy for a dying microbe explores what we really mean by ‘death’
9 minutes
video
Biotechnology
It’s our responsibility to engineer corals that can weather the world we’ve created
11 minutes
video
Physics
Imagining spacetime as a visible grid is an extraordinary journey into the unseen
12 minutes
video
Engineering
For one of nature’s great builders, finding a mate means weaving the perfect nest
4 minutes