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Life is durable and Earth-like planets aren’t rare. So where are all the aliens?
Potentially habitable planets are more plentiful then we once thought: there are trillions in the Universe, and an estimated million in the Milky Way alone. Looking inward at our own small life-sustaining planet, we’ve also discovered that life isn’t nearly as delicate as we had imaged: lifeforms exist buried in the Earth’s crust and deep underwater, in extreme heat and extreme cold. So why, in every search for intelligent life elsewhere in the Universe, have we come up so utterly empty?
Video by Kurzgesagt
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Evolution
The many ways a lizard tongue sticks, grasps, pinches and plops – in slo-mo
6 minutes
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Biology
Starlings swoosh like brushstrokes across the sky in this dazzling short
3 minutes
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Engineering
From simple motors to levitating trains – how design shapes innovation
23 minutes
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Ecology and environmental sciences
The tree frog die-off that sparked a global mystery – and revealed a dark truth
15 minutes
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Film and visual culture
Our world has very different contours when a millimetre is blown up to a full screen
8 minutes
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Astronomy
The remarkable innovations inspired by our need to know the night sky
5 minutes
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Knowledge
Why it takes more than a lifetime to truly understand a single meadow
11 minutes
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Physics
Groundbreaking visualisations show how the world of the nucleus gives rise to our own
10 minutes
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Earth science and climate
There’s a ‘climate bomb’ ticking beneath the Arctic ice. How can we prepare?
8 minutes