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Everywhere that scientists look, they seem to be finding creatures clinging to life in increasingly remote environments – from Antarctic ice to boiling hydrothermal vents at the bottom of oceans. However, biologists have only recently begun paying close attention to one of the planet’s most fascinating venues for life: the sky. A collaboration between the US filmmaker Flora Lichtman and the California Academy of Sciences’ digital publication bioGraphic, the short film Life in the Clouds examines the complex and utterly fascinating ecosystems far above our heads.
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Earth science and climate
A biologist on the sorrows of documenting the Great Salt Lake’s collapse
6 minutes
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Design and fashion
Household items are reborn in a ‘visual symphony of everyday objects’
11 minutes
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Music
As a pianist strikes a chord, visualisations of his notes appear in real time
5 minutes
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Quantum theory
Why aren’t our everyday lives as ‘spooky’ as the quantum world?
7 minutes
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Space exploration
Burning ice, metal clouds, gemstone rain – tour the strangest known exoplanets
31 minutes
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Logic and probability
Chew over the prisoner’s dilemma and see if you can find the rational path out
6 minutes
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Biology
The idea that life on Earth originated elsewhere is not as far out as it seems
6 minutes
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Biology
Flicker through the eclectic beauty and biological diversity of 2,400 leaves
3 minutes
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Metaphysics
Bertrand Russell wanted to kill off causation. Can contemporary philosophy rescue it?
8 minutes