Tom Scott

The Mars Yard, at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, is one of the closest simulations of Mars that we’ve got. Admittedly, there’s a bit more atmosphere and gravity, but it’s the only way to test what might happen before sending commands to a rover that’s light-minutes away. More about the Mars Science Laboratory and the Curiosity

The Forbes Pigment Collection at the Harvard Art Museums is a collection of pigments, binders, and other art materials for researchers to use as standards: so they can tell originals from restorations from forgeries. It’s not open to the public, because it’s a working research library — and because some of the pigments in there

In the last few years, wildfires have been getting worse – and, oddly, it’s because humans have been preventing them. From a helicopter above the forests of British Columbia, and from the Tree Ring Lab at UBC, let’s talk about how we should just let some wildfires burn. Thanks to Bradley Friesen! He’s about to

In Lillehammer, Norway, it’s time to make some snow. With science. As well as being one of my regular videos, this is an ad for the 2016 Youth Winter Olympic Games! Subscribe to the Olympic YouTube channel: http://bit.ly/1MFol69 – and see the rest of this description for more links. Discover more about the science of

The White Horse, in Uffington, is one of the oldest surviving works of art in Britain: carved into a hillside in Oxfordshire 3,000 years ago. Every year, it’s rechalked by volunteers co-ordinated through the National Trust, a line of maintenance going back to before England had written history. Thanks to all the National Trust team!

Many people sent me this story: it covers my favourite topics of power grids and temporal anomalies. But when the mainstream press have already covered it, how could I add something more? The answer: by adding another pet topic, Unnecessary British Patriotism. And a teasmade. Press release: https://www.entsoe.eu/news-events/announcements/announcements-archive/Pages/News/2018-03-06-press-release-continuing-frequency-deviation-in-the-continental-european-power-system.aspx Teasmade: http://amzn.to/2oYrvxb [aff. link] Update, April 8th

Check out BrainCraft! https://www.youtube.com/braincraft – start with the Growth Mindset https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gxv_FHrRYQw or lucid dreaming https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5qUr0enMGE • Deep in Brooklyn there’s a beach you definitely wouldn’t swim at, unless you’re an archaeologist. Dead Horse Bay served as an unofficial dump for decades, and now as the sand is washed away the boroughs’ history is slowly being

There’s a titan arum – a corpse flower – blooming at the Eden Project in Cornwall. For years, it stores energy: and then for 48 hours, it heats up and sends out the smell of decay and death through the rainforest. And it stinks. The Eden Project: http://www.edenproject.com/ or on YouTube at: https://youtube.com/EdenProjectTV I’m at

http://tomscott.com – http://twitter.com/tomscott – This is the most ridiculous thing I’ve built in a long while: a full-size, real-life emoji keyboard, made of 14 keyboards and over 1,000 individually placed stickers. And yet, it’s got everything from Unicode 8 — but not yet the candidates from Unicode 9. I might need another keyboard for them,

Wunderland Kalkar, near the German-Dutch border, is a family amusement park… inside a nuclear power plant that was never turned on. Thanks to all the team at the park! Their web site is at https://www.wunderlandkalkar.eu/en The video from Zwentendorf: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUVZbBBHrI4 Edited by Michelle Martin (@mrsmmartin) Filmed safely: https://www.tomscott.com/safe/ I’m at https://tomscott.com on Twitter at https://twitter.com/tomscott

http://tomscott.com – http://twitter.com/tomscott – If you travel to Greenwich, stand on the famous Prime Meridian Line — which is marked with a physical line and a sculpture at the Royal Observatory — and look at your GPS, it won’t read 0° longitude. It’ll be slightly out. Who’s right? And why? Many thanks to my lovely

The tourist guides promote it as Georgia’s Little Grand Canyon: but this is a scar on the Earth, caused by humans either not understanding or not caring about geology. Is it natural? Or man-made? Or both? I’m at http://tomscott.com on Twitter at http://twitter.com/tomscott on Facebook at http://facebook.com/tomscott and on Instagram as tomscottgo

Schengen is a small town in Luxembourg, on the borders with France and Germany. But one of those borders is a little more complicated: the Mosel (or Moselle) river is a condominium, it belongs to both countries at the same time. And thus, so the bridges above it. REFERENCES: I’m not 100% happy with the

In the Aljarafe region of Spain, there’s PS10 and PS20: concentrated solar power towers. They’re huge towers surrounded by heliostats: movable mirrors that track the sun and reflect its light onto a giant boiler. They are beautiful, but they’re also controversial: here’s why. I’m at http://tomscott.com on Facebook at http://facebook.com/tomscott on Twitter at http://twitter.com/tomscott and

The Global Vehicle Target is the new standard for testing autonomous driving and crash test systems. To cameras and radar, it looks like a car: but if you hit it, it’ll fly apart. So if your emergency braking doesn’t quite work… well, this is what happens. Thanks to everyone at Thatcham Research! You can find

At the JET reactor at Culham Centre for Fusion Energy — http://ccfe.ac.uk — I talk to the engineers about fusion power, being the hottest place in the solar system, deliberate disruptions, and about the surround-sound speakers that give a diagnostic test you might not expect. Thanks to everyone at CCFE! They hold occasional open days:

Yttrium, terbium, erbium and ytterbium were all named after one small town on the Stockholm archipelago. But it could have been different, and there could have been many other names. From a snowy bit of Sweden, and a mine that’s a historical landmark, let’s talk about discovery, chemists, and a man named Gadolin. Thanks to

Thanks to Betty from Articulations! Go see her video on the ISO Standard Exit Sign here: https://youtu.be/i5uSlAw8U9s – and pull down this description for links to all her sources. The St Lawrence Burns were a series of deliberate fires in the soon-to-be-demolished village of Aultsville, Ontario, which was due to be flooded to make way

In Fife, in the south-east of Scotland, there’s the Elie Chain Walk: a footpath that’s got a reputation for being dangerous. It isn’t — as long as you’re prepared, and as long as you watch out for the tide. Thanks to Allan Dunlop and Carrie Blair from Outdoor Education Fife, for both guiding me and

Over the North Atlantic, there’s no radar coverage: so how do air traffic controllers keep planes safe? The answer, at least in part, can be found at Nav Canada’s Gander Area Control Centre in Newfoundland. The North Atlantic Tracks are like freeway lanes in the sky, if freeway lanes were stacked a thousand feet on

If you want to sell alcohol in England, you need a license. But the Licensing Act 2003 has some unusual exceptions. • Thanks to Marc and the team from the Axceler-8 Hovercraft Centre: http://hovercraftcentre.co.uk/ • Behind the scenes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQXqkBiqRCI Licensing Act 2003: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2003/17/contents Filmed safely: https://www.tomscott.com/safe/ Camera: Matt Gray https://mattg.co.uk Logistics and original idea: Jonty

In Porthcurno, Cornwall, there’s an old telegraph cable landing station. It’s how Britain talked to the Empire — and it’s now a museum. But the technology here isn’t quite as obsolete as you might think. Thanks to Steve and all the team at the Porthcurno Telegraph Museum! You can find out more about them here:

[UPDATE: This video has an important update! As of February 2022, the deadline for paths has been cancelled. The mapping still continues, and there’s still a plan to have a definitive map, but old rights of way will no longer be wiped: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/feb/17/deadline-to-register-englands-footpaths-cancelled-after-public-access-campaign ] The Icknield Way, in south-east England, is a road and footpath

With many, many thanks to all the team at DP World London Gateway (http://londongateway.com – http://twitter.com/LondonGatewayUK )! This isn’t a sponsored video: they just went above and beyond to make sure this looked good, and I’m so grateful to them. On main camera was Matt Gray (http://mattg.co.uk – http://twitter.com/unnamedculprit) – you can see the full

http://tomscott.com – @tomscott – If you see the phrase “10 items or less” in a supermarket and immediately cringe and complain that it should be “10 items or fewer”… well, you are not going to like this week’s video.

Wage transparency is a strange concept for most of us: not so in some of the Nordic countries. And while Norway, Sweden and Finland differ in exactly the amount of access they give the public, fundamentally your tax return would be public knowledge there. So how does it affect the world? And is it a

http://tomscott.com – @tomscott – Colours are easy, right? They’re one of the first things you learn as a kid. But what if “blue” and “green” were the same colour? Or “light blue” and “dark blue” weren’t? Well, guess what: there are languages out there that do exactly that.

The brown marmorated stink bug is an invasive pest. To help deal with its numbers, the Oregon Department of Agriculture is releasing its natural enemy: the tiny samurai wasp. There’s a lot of work that goes into it. ▪ Thanks to all the team at the ODA, and to Chris Hedstrom for the macro footage.

Near Hindon, on the South Island of New Zealand, there’s one of only two remaining one-lane road-rail bridges in the country. No barriers, no lights, no sirens: if you’re driving across this, you need to make sure to listen out for the train horn. Thanks to all the Dunedin Railways team! You can find out

There are rules in the English language that you’ve probably never been taught, but you know anyway: how to split apart words with “infixes”. But you’ve never been taught it because some of those infixes are words you probably shouldn’t use in front of your high school English teachers… Written with Molly Ruhl and Gretchen