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Why can concave surfaces look convex when viewed from overhead (and vice versa)?
Mountain or valley? Concave or convex? Why is it so difficult to tell the difference when you’re viewing a surface from directly overhead? This short animation from MinutePhysics details how this perceptual illusion is explained by our natural conditioning to the Earth’s most powerful light source – the Sun – which has trained us to perceive light as always being on top and shadows as always being on the bottom.
Video by MinutePhysics
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Oceans and water
A stunning visualisation explores the intricate circulatory system of our oceans
5 minutes
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Earth science and climate
Images carved into film form a haunting elegy for a disappearing slice of Earth
3 minutes
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Engineering
Can monumental ‘ice stupas’ help remote Himalayan villages survive?
15 minutes
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Cognition and intelligence
A father forgets his child’s name for the first time in this poetic reflection on memory
4 minutes
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Biology
‘Save the parasites’ may not be a popular rallying cry – but it could be a vital one
11 minutes
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Bioethics
What a 1970 experiment reveals about the possibility and perils of ‘head transplants’
6 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
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Neuroscience
This intricate map of a fruit fly brain could signal a revolution in neuroscience
2 minutes
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Knowledge
An Indigenous myth and a geological survey elicit two ways of knowing one place
4 minutes