Science by Moonlight

Science by Moonlight
  • 0.0 (0)
  • Natural Sciences
  • Semiweekly

Long, calm science journeys, read slowly, to help you fall asleep. One gentle subject each night, from the Moon and the stars to the deep ocean, volcanoes, forests and the creatures of our planet. There is nothing to remember and nothing to do: just listen, and drift off. Narration is AI-generated, from scripts built on NASA, NOAA, USGS and peer-reviewed sources. The full videos, with images, are on YouTube.

Episodes

  1. 1d ago

    How Do Sea Turtles Find Their Way Home?

    Watch the full video, with images: https://youtu.be/qFp5e7DIqb4 Tonight, a slow and gentle journey through the whole life of one loggerhead sea turtle. We begin on a warm summer night on a beach in Florida, watch a mother make her nest in the sand, and wait with the eggs until the hatchlings dig their way out together and crawl toward the moonlit sea. Then we drift with our little turtle into the great warm current that circles the North Atlantic, rest among the golden floating seaweed of the Sargasso Sea, look closely at her shell and flippers, meet the seven kinds of sea turtle, and follow her to the coast, where she feeds among sea grass and reefs and sleeps beneath a ledge of rock. Along the way we gather, one by one, the clues to the question of the night: how she finds her way home, some thirty years later, with a map written in the Earth's magnetism. Original diagrams: a map of her long loop around the North Atlantic, a timeline of her whole life, and the magnetic map of the coast that guides her home. There is nothing to remember and nothing to do. Just listen, and drift off. 0:00 Good Evening, on a Moonlit Beach 11:14 A Nest in the Warm Sand 22:29 The Night of the Hatchlings 33:49 Into the Great Ocean Current 45:36 Floating Gardens of the Open Sea 57:35 A Turtle's Shell and Flippers 1:08:58 Seven Kinds of Sea Turtle 1:20:54 Growing Up Along the Coast 1:32:34 How a Turtle Sleeps 1:44:13 A Map Written in the Earth's Magnetism 1:55:44 The Long Swim Home 2:07:30 Home Again, and Good Night Sources NOAA Fisheries, NOAA Ocean Service and the Office of National Marine Sanctuaries (Gray's Reef), U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, U.S. National Park Service (Cape Hatteras, Cape Lookout, Canaveral), U.S. Geological Survey, NASA Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, the United Nations World Ocean Assessment (Sargasso Sea), Natural History Museum London, Florida Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (Lohmann lab), University of Central Florida, University of Florida and others Peer-reviewed papers (Science, Nature, Current Biology, PNAS, Biology Letters, PLoS ONE, Marine Ecology Progress Series and others) Images Paintings: Winslow Homer, Moonlight, Wood Island Light (1894, The Metropolitan Museum of Art Open Access); Ivan Aivazovsky, A Moonlit Night at Sea (1885); Carl Gustav Carus, Moonlit Night near Rügen; Hans Verhagen der Stomme (c. 1570, Austrian National Library); public domain. Public-domain plates and maps: Mark Catesby (1743, Missouri Botanical Garden); Iconographia Zoologica (University of Amsterdam); E. Rüppell and M. E. Descourtilz (Biodiversity Heritage Library); Anna Atkins, cyanotype (1840s, New York Public Library); A. H. Baldwin (1905); Élisée Reclus (1873); Benjamin Franklin and James Poupard, A Chart of the Gulf Stream (1786, Library of Congress). NASA: Johnson Space Center (astronaut photographs; Terry Virts), Kennedy Space Center (Glenn Benson, Ben Smegelsky, Amber Jean Notvest), Goddard Space Flight Center (MODIS, Scientific Visualization Studio, Greg Shirah), Milan Loiacono. NOAA: Gray's Reef (Greg McFall, Matthew Chonka), Flower Garden Banks (G. P. Schmahl), Hawaiian Islands Humpback Whale (Claire Fackler, Ali Bayless, Ed Lyman, Nick Zachar) and Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuaries, Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument (James Watt, John Burns), NOAA Fisheries (Dwayne Meadows). U.S. National Park Service: Cape Hatteras, Canaveral, Cumberland Island, Padre Island (Division of Sea Turtle Science and Recovery), Dry Tortugas (Tracy Ziegler), Biscayne, Everglades. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (Becky Skiba, Molly Martin, Steve Hillebrand, Ryan Hagerty, Sheldon Plentovich, Jordan Akiyama, Percy Ulsamer, David Rabon, Lilibeth Serrano); U.S. Geological Survey (Caroline S. Rogers). CC0: taylor duncan (iNaturalist), RealGatba (Wikimedia Commons). Maps drawn with Natural Earth and NOAA ETOPO data (public domain); magnetic field from the International Geomagnetic Reference Field (IAGA). U.S. Government works, Open Access and CC0 images; paintings, drawings, prints and plates published before 1931 are in the public domain. No endorsement implied. About this video The narration and the music were created with AI tools (Google Gemini). There are no AI images in this video: every picture is a real photograph, a historical painting, drawing or plate, or a diagram drawn with code. Every fact was checked twice against the sources listed above before publishing. #sleep #seaturtles #science

  2. 3d ago

    What Was the Last Ice Age Really Like?

    Watch the full video, with images: https://youtu.be/4RrnoQYAGHU Tonight, a slow and gentle journey to the coldest stretch of the last ice age, about twenty thousand years ago. We walk along the edge of the great ice sheets, read the messages hidden in ancient ice, and follow a shore that lay far out beyond today's coast, when Asia and North America were joined. Then we cross the wide, windy grassland of the mammoths, meet the woolly mammoths, the woolly rhinoceros, the giant deer and the wild horses, and learn how pollen, bones, frozen ground, ocean mud and old coral reveal what that world was really like. We visit the people of the ice age by their fires, follow the long thaw, and find the lakes, valleys and boulders the ice left behind. Original diagrams: a world map with the sea lowered by about 120 meters, a timeline of the last 120,000 years, and the thickness of the ice beside mountains and towers. There is nothing to remember and nothing to do. Just listen, and drift off. 0:00 Good Evening, Twenty Thousand Years Ago 11:46 The Great Ice 23:35 How We Know: Messages in the Ice 35:06 When the Sea Stepped Back 46:25 The Mammoth Steppe 58:39 The Woolly Mammoths 1:10:14 Neighbors of the Mammoth 1:21:57 How We Know: Pollen, Bones and Frozen Ground 1:33:50 People of the Ice Age 1:46:04 How We Know: Mud, Shells and Ancient Shores 1:58:29 The Long Thaw 2:10:46 Gifts of the Ice, and Good Night Sources U.S. National Park Service (Bering Land Bridge, White Sands, Yosemite, Kenai Fjords, Glacier Bay and others), U.S. Geological Survey, NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information and Climate.gov, NASA Science, the National Snow and Ice Data Center Natural History Museum London, Smithsonian Human Origins, the French Ministry of Culture (Lascaux and Chauvet), the Government of Yukon and the Yukon Beringia Interpretive Centre Universities of Arizona, Alberta, Sheffield, Exeter, Waterloo, McMaster, Sydney and others Peer-reviewed papers (Climate of the Past, PubMed Central and others) Images Paintings and drawings by Charles R. Knight (1909-1929; American Museum of Natural History and Field Museum murals; Osborn, Men of the Old Stone Age; Hutchinson, Extinct Monsters), public domain. Public-domain plates: É. Lartet and H. Christy, Reliquiae Aquitanicae (1865-1875); Ernst Haeckel, Kunstformen der Natur (1904); C. J. Fritzsche, Ueber den Pollen (1837); Flora Danica (1761); snow crystals by Wilson A. Bentley (1890s, The Metropolitan Museum of Art Open Access); Photochrom prints, Library of Congress (Detroit Publishing Co.). NASA: Operation IceBridge (Michael Studinger, Jeremy Harbeck, Jim Yungel, George Hale, Lora Koenig), Earth Observatory (Jesse Allen, Landsat), Goddard Space Flight Center (MODIS Rapid Response, Blue Marble, Ludovic Brucker), Scientific Visualization Studio, ISS crew photograph. U.S. National Park Service: Bering Land Bridge (Neal Herbert), Cape Krusenstern, Denali (Jacob W. Frank, Tim Rains), Glacier (Tim Rains, Jacob W. Frank), Glacier Bay, Kenai Fjords, Wrangell-St. Elias (Jacob W. Frank), Yosemite (Reba McCracken), Yellowstone (Neal Herbert, Diane Renkin), White Sands, Grand Canyon (Michael Quinn), Mount Rainier (Steve Redman), Devils Postpile, Lassen Volcanic, Padre Island; Historic American Engineering Record (Brian Grogan). U.S. Geological Survey (National Ice Core Laboratory, Brandt Meixell, Jessica Spear); NOAA (Ben Edmonds; Matt Wilson and Jay Clark, NOAA Fisheries); U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (Daphne Carlson Bremer, Danielle Brigida, Richard Ruggiero, Clint Wirick, Tom Koerner); Bureau of Land Management; USDA NRCS; U.S. EPA DOCUMERICA (Patricia D. Duncan, National Archives). Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, Department of Paleobiology, and Smithsonian's National Zoo (Jessie Cohen): Open Access, CC0. Maps drawn with NOAA ETOPO depth data (public domain); ice core and sea-level curves from NOAA NCEI paleoclimate data. U.S. Government works and Smithsonian CC0 images; paintings and plates published before 1931 are in the public domain. No endorsement implied. About this video The narration and the music were created with AI tools (Google Gemini). There are no AI images in this video: every picture is a real photograph, a historical painting or plate, or a diagram drawn with code. Every fact was checked twice against the sources listed above before publishing. #sleep #iceage #science

  3. 6d ago

    The Forest at Night, Told Slowly

    Watch the full video, with images: https://youtu.be/lKcyiXHU_ys Tonight, a slow and gentle walk through a quiet forest from dusk to dawn. We watch the light turn blue and the dew gather, breathe the smell of damp earth, and learn how trees rest through the night and how the fungi and the countless tiny lives in the soil keep working below. We meet the owls gliding in silence, hedgehogs and badgers, raccoons and flying squirrels, the gentle bats, and the fireflies and glowing fungi that light the dark. Then the night music of crickets, katydids and nightingales, the moths and the pale flowers that open in the evening, the birds and squirrels asleep in the trees, and the first songs of the dawn. There is nothing to remember and nothing to do. Just listen, and drift off. 0:00 Good Evening, Into the Evening Forest 11:20 When the Light Fades 22:59 Trees at Rest 34:37 The Hidden Life Below 46:20 Owls, Gliding in Silence 57:42 Small Night Wanderers 1:08:20 Bats, Gentle Travelers of the Dark 1:19:11 Lights in the Forest 1:30:04 The Night Music 1:41:58 Moths and Night Flowers 1:53:50 Sleeping in the Trees 2:05:39 Dawn Comes Slowly, and Good Night Sources Woodland Trust, RSPB, the British Trust for Ornithology, the Natural History Museum London, the Bat Conservation Trust, Butterfly Conservation, the Royal Horticultural Society and the John Innes Centre U.S. National Park Service (Great Smoky Mountains, Big Bend and others), U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, NOAA and the National Weather Service, Smithsonian's National Zoo, Bat Conservation International Universities and extension services (University of Florida IFAS, University of Colorado Boulder, University of Alberta, University of Puget Sound, NC State, Penn State, Mississippi State), the Swiss Federal Institute WSL Peer-reviewed papers through Europe PMC, PubMed Central and the publishers (PNAS, Frontiers in Plant Science, Plant Physiology, Biology Letters, Nature, Proceedings of the Royal Society B, Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics) Images U.S. National Park Service: Great Smoky Mountains (Thom McManus), Shenandoah (NPS/B. Raeburn, D. Machado, K. Stoll, Katy Cain, N. Lewis), Olympic (NPS/D. Archuleta), Everglades (Evan Wexler, G. Gardner), Carlsbad Caverns (NPS/Dan Pawlak), Grand Teton (NPS/Adams), Yellowstone (NPS/Jacob W. Frank), Glacier and Monocacy (NPS). U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (Kayt Jonsson, Alex Galt, Courtney Celley, Debbie Koenigs, Gabe Wahl, Rachel Samerdyke, Tom Koerner, Bruce Hallman, Laurie Sheppard), USDA Forest Service (Suzanne Flory, Rachel Van Horne; Superior and Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie National Forests), USGS Bee Inventory and Monitoring Lab (Sam Droege). Public-domain plates and photographs from the Biodiversity Heritage Library: John Gould, The Birds of Europe; Archibald Thorburn, British Mammals (1920); R. Lydekker, British Mammalia (1896); H. J. Elwes and A. Henry, The Trees of Great Britain and Ireland (1906-07); Anne Pratt, Wild Flowers (1857); John Curtis, British Entomology; Naumann, Naturgeschichte der Voegel Mitteleuropas; A. W. Seaby; F. Schuyler Mathews; John Burroughs; Pilze der Heimat (1913); and others. Library of Congress, Detroit Publishing Co. photochrom. The photographs are works of the U.S. Government (National Park Service, Fish and Wildlife Service, Forest Service, USGS) and the old plates and photographs are in the public domain. Their use does not imply endorsement by any agency or library. About this video The narration, the music and some of the images were created with AI tools (Google Gemini). The AI images are artistic impressions. The photographs come from the U.S. National Park Service, Fish and Wildlife Service, Forest Service and USGS, and the old plates from public-domain books in the Biodiversity Heritage Library. The diagrams were drawn with code. Every fact was checked twice against the sources listed above before publishing. #sleep #forest #nature

  4. Nov 1

    Inside a Volcano: The Quiet Fire Beneath Our Feet

    Watch the full video, with images: https://youtu.be/EVLn_A7-bC0 Tonight, a slow and gentle journey into the warm heart of the Earth, watched from a safe and quiet distance. We drift down through the layers beneath your bed, learn the three gentle ways that rock melts, and meet the many shapes of volcanoes, from the wide shield of Mauna Loa to the small cone that grew in a farmer's cornfield. We visit the islands of Hawaii and their slowly cooling lava, the patient people who listen to volcanoes through the night, and the hot springs and geysers of Yellowstone. Then the gifts of volcanoes, the fire under Iceland's ice, a new island rising from the sea, volcanoes on other worlds, and the quiet warmth that carries us all. There is nothing to remember and nothing to do. Just listen, and drift off. 0:00 Good Evening, the Warm Earth Beneath Us 11:12 A Journey Down Through the Layers 22:24 How Magma Is Born 33:34 The Many Shapes of Volcanoes 44:45 Islands Born from a Hotspot 56:30 Lava, Slowly Cooling 1:08:12 Listening to a Volcano 1:19:44 Yellowstone, a Sleeping Giant 1:31:54 The Gifts of Volcanoes 1:43:55 Fire Under Ice and Sea 1:55:23 Volcanoes on Other Worlds 2:06:37 The Quiet Fire, and Good Night Sources U.S. Geological Survey: the Volcano Hazards Program, the Hawaiian, Yellowstone and California Volcano Observatories and Volcano Watch: usgs.gov, pubs.usgs.gov U.S. National Park Service (Hawaii Volcanoes, Yellowstone, Crater Lake, Lassen, Devils Postpile, Grand Canyon-Parashant): nps.gov NASA Science and NASA Earth Observatory (Mars, Io, Venus, the Earth's interior): science.nasa.gov; Oregon State University Volcano World; British Geological Survey Icelandic Meteorological Office, Orkustofnun (National Energy Authority of Iceland) and the Surtsey Research Society: vedur.is, orkustofnun.is, surtsey.is; University of Hawaii; National Trust Peer-reviewed papers (among them the KamLAND study of the Earth's heat in Nature Geoscience, 2011, and the ESRF study of the inner core, 2013) and the Geological Society of America Images USGS Hawaiian Volcano Observatory (USGS photos by M. Zoeller, K. Mulliken, C. Parcheta, S. Conway and M. Warren), the California Volcano Observatory, the Volcano Hazards Program and the USGS mineral collection; the first report of the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory (1912). U.S. National Park Service: Hawaii Volcanoes (NPS Photo/Janice Wei), Yellowstone (NPS/Jacob W. Frank, NPS/Jim Peaco, NPS/Neal Herbert), Craters of the Moon (NPS/Jacob W. Frank), Crater Lake, NPS Natural Resources (NPS Photo/Don Wood), NPGallery. USFWS (R. Corcoran, USFWS Pacific), NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration and Research, USDA Pomological Watercolor Collection (J. Marion Shull, 1938). NASA: astronaut photography from the Space Shuttle and the International Space Station (NASA, NASA/Chris Williams, NASA/Michael Barratt), Artemis II, NASA Earth Observatory (Lauren Dauphin, Landsat data from the USGS), NASA/GSFC/Jeff Schmaltz/MODIS Land Rapid Response Team, NASA/GSFC/Kelsey Young, NASA/MSFC, NASA/METI/AIST/Japan Space Systems and the U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team, NASA/JPL (Viking), NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU (Mars Odyssey), NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute (Cassini), NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/ASI/INAF/Alessandro Mura (Juno), Galileo and Magellan. Public-domain prints: Ando Hiroshige, The pine grove at Miho in Suruga Province (Library of Congress); Detroit Publishing Co., the Giant's Causeway (photochrom, 1890s). NASA images are in the public domain or used under NASA's media guidelines with the credits above; USGS, National Park Service, USFWS, USDA and NOAA photographs are works of the U.S. Government; the old prints are in the public domain. Their use does not imply endorsement by any agency, park or library. About this video The narration, the music and some of the images were created with AI tools (Google Gemini). The AI images are artistic impressions. The photographs come from the USGS and its volcano observatories, the National Park Service, NASA and other U.S. agencies, and the old prints from public-domain collections. The diagrams were drawn with code. Every fact was checked twice against the sources listed above before publishing. #sleep #volcano #science

  5. Oct 29

    Black Holes, Explained Slowly

    Watch the full video, with images: https://youtu.be/UsQKb2F5zj4 Tonight, a slow and gentle journey to the quietest and most mysterious places in the universe. We begin with the soft pull of gravity, a falling apple and the Moon, and the old idea of dark stars. We follow Einstein's curved space, the 1919 eclipse, and the long life of a great star whose heart settles inward. Then the edge called the event horizon, the first black hole found by its companion star, the calm giant at the heart of our galaxy, and the first picture of a black hole's shadow. We listen to ripples in space, meet the giants at the hearts of galaxies, and Hawking's faint glow, before coming home to a quiet sky. Every black hole is very far from here. There is nothing to remember and nothing to do. Just listen, and drift off. 0:00 Good Evening, the Darkest Places 10:39 The Gentle Pull of Gravity 21:49 Space That Curves 32:58 How a Black Hole Begins 43:49 The Edge Called the Event Horizon 55:00 Finding Something You Cannot See 1:06:20 The Quiet Giant at the Heart of Our Galaxy 1:17:33 A Picture of a Shadow 1:28:49 Ripples in Space 1:40:30 Giants in Every Great Galaxy 1:51:54 Hawking's Faint Glow 2:03:29 Calm in the Dark, and Good Night Sources NASA Science, NASA Goddard (Imagine the Universe), NASA JPL and the Chandra X-ray Center: science.nasa.gov, imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov, chandra.harvard.edu LIGO Laboratory (Caltech and MIT): ligo.caltech.edu; the Nobel Prize pages for physics 2017 and 2020: nobelprize.org ESO and ESA, for facts only (the Event Horizon Telescope announcements, S2, Gaia): eso.org, esa.int; ICRAR; the Max Planck Society; the Royal Society; Linda Hall Library Caltech, Harvard and Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, UC Berkeley and John Preskill's pages; peer-reviewed papers through arXiv and Europe PMC (Physical Review Letters, Science, Nature) Images Hubble and Webb: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA), the Webb ERO Production Team, J. DePasquale, A. Pagan, J. Olmsted, G. Bacon, A. Feild, L. Hustak, T. Brown, S. Casertano, J. Anderson, N. Tr'Ehnl, R. Ellis, J.-P. Kneib, S. Baum, C. O'Dea, R. Perley, W. Cotton (NRAO/AUI/NSF), A. Nota and the Westerlund 2 Science Team, A. Ginsburg, N. Budaiev and colleagues. Chandra: NASA/CXC, NASA/CXC/M.Weiss, NASA/CXC/SAO, NASA/CXC/MIT/F.K. Baganoff et al., NASA/CXC/PSU/G. Pavlov et al., NASA/CXC/UMass/D. Wang et al., NASA/CXC/Villanova University/J. Neilsen. Other NASA images: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center (Jeremy Schnittman, Brian P. Powell, Scott Noble with d'Ascoli et al. 2018, Bernard J. Kelly, Chris Henze, Tim Sandstrom), NASA/SDO and the AIA, EVE and HMI science teams, NASA EPIC Team, NASA/JPL-Caltech, NASA/Keegan Barber, NASA (JSC, KSC). U.S. National Park Service (NPS/Jacob W. Frank, NPS/Rhodes Smartt, NPS/Emily Hassell, NPS/Addy Falgoust, NPS/Jeremy M. White; Glacier National Park), USFWS/A. LaValle, USDA Pomological Watercolor Collection (M. Strange, 1914), Smithsonian National Museum of American History (Ellen Harding Baker's quilt, 1876, CC0), Historic American Buildings Survey (Jack E. Boucher), Library of Congress. Public-domain prints and papers: Newton's Principia (1687), Michell in the Philosophical Transactions (1784), Laplace (1796), Bode's Uranographia (1801), Einstein and Schwarzschild (1916), the 1919 eclipse plates of Dyson, Eddington and Davidson (1920), a Japanese woodcut of about 1890. NASA images are in the public domain or used under NASA's media guidelines with the credits above; National Park Service, USDA and USFWS photographs are works of the U.S. Government; the Smithsonian image is CC0; the old prints and papers are in the public domain. Their use does not imply endorsement by any agency, museum or library. The ring of light around a dark center is our own drawing and an AI impression, not a telescope image. About this video The narration, the music and some of the images were created with AI tools (Google Gemini). The AI images are artistic impressions. The photographs and illustrations come from NASA, Chandra, Hubble and Webb, the National Park Service and public-domain collections. The diagrams were drawn with code. Every fact was checked twice against the sources listed above before publishing. #sleep #blackholes #space

  6. Oct 26

    Where Did Earth's Water Come From?

    Watch the full video, with images: https://youtu.be/QaLjWNFTwOo Tonight, a slow and gentle journey with a glass of water by the bed. We follow its story back to the stars, where hydrogen and oxygen first met, and to the cold, dark clouds where water forms as frost on tiny grains of dust. We drift through the disk around the young Sun, the glowing young Earth and its old puzzle, and the quiet fingerprints in the water that help scientists trace where it came from: comets, asteroids, or the Earth's own rocks. Then the first oceans, the water hidden deep inside the Earth, why our world kept its water, and the long journey of a single drop, before we come back to the glass by the bed. There is nothing to remember and nothing to do. Just listen, and drift off. 0:00 Good Evening, a Glass of Water 10:50 Born in the Stars 21:55 The Cloud That Became the Sun 32:41 The Young Earth and Its Puzzle 43:13 Fingerprints in the Water 54:16 Messengers of Ice, the Comets 1:05:23 Gifts from the Asteroid Belt 1:16:29 Water from the Beginning 1:27:51 Water Hidden Deep Inside 1:38:35 Why Earth Kept Its Water 1:49:35 The Long Journey of a Drop 2:00:38 Every Glass of Water, and Good Night Sources NASA Science, NASA Astrobiology, NASA Goddard and NASA JPL (OSIRIS-REx, Webb, Herschel, MAVEN): science.nasa.gov, astrobiology.nasa.gov, jpl.nasa.gov U.S. Geological Survey Water Science School and Volcano Hazards Program: usgs.gov; NOAA and UCAR (snow, clouds, the water cycle): noaa.gov, scied.ucar.edu European Space Agency (Giotto, Rosetta, Herschel) and JAXA (Hayabusa2), for facts only: esa.int, isas.jaxa.jp; ESO; NIST and the IAEA (the ocean water standard) Natural History Museum London; University of Alberta, Northwestern University, Washington University in St. Louis, Caltech, Stockholm University and CNRS (press pages) Peer-reviewed papers in Science, Nature, Science Advances, PNAS and others (Cleeves 2014, Hartogh 2011, Altwegg 2015, Piani 2020, Wilde 2001, Pearson 2014), read through the publishers, arXiv and Europe PMC Images NASA: astronaut and Earth photography (NASA, NASA/Matthew Dominick, NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center/Reto Stöckli, NASA/GSFC/Jeff Schmaltz/MODIS Land Rapid Response Team, NASA/Jim Yungel), NASA/Keegan Barber and NASA/Erika Blumenfeld and Joseph Aebersold (the Bennu sample), NASA Ames Research Center (Pioneer Venus), NASA/W. Liller (Halley's comet, 1986), Eric Bordelon (NASA Michoud). Hubble and Webb: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, the Hubble Heritage Team and Project, J. Bell, M. Wolff, K. Pontoppidan, the IceAge ERS Team, F. Sun, Z. Smith, D. Milisavljevic, I. De Looze, T. Temim; image processing J. DePasquale, A. Pagan, A. Koekemoer. NASA/JPL-Caltech, NASA/JPL-Caltech/Harvard-Smithsonian CfA, NASA/JPL-Caltech/UMD, NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Zurich. U.S. National Park Service: Yellowstone (NPS/Jacob W. Frank, NPS/Neal Herbert, NPS/Diane Renkin), Glacier (NPS/Jacob W. Frank, NPS/Tim Rains), Arches (NPS/Neal Herbert), Denali (NPS/Emily Mesner), Great Sand Dunes (NPS/Patrick Myers), Olympic (NPS/D. Archuleta), Shenandoah (NPS/M. O'Neill), Acadia, Kenai Fjords, Pictured Rocks and Santa Monica Mountains (NPS). USGS Hawaiian Volcano Observatory. Smithsonian Open Access (CC0): National Museum of Natural History, Department of Mineral Sciences, and Smithsonian Institution Archives (snowflakes photographed by Wilson A. Bentley, about 1890). Public-domain prints: E. Weiss, Bilder-Atlas der Sternenwelt (1888); E. L. Trouvelot, The Great Comet of 1881. NASA images are in the public domain or used under NASA's media guidelines with the credits above; National Park Service and USGS photographs are works of the U.S. Government; Smithsonian Open Access images are CC0; the old prints are in the public domain. Their use does not imply endorsement by any agency or museum. About this video The narration, the music and some of the images were created with AI tools (Google Gemini). The AI images are artistic impressions. The photographs come from NASA, the U.S. National Park Service, the USGS and the Smithsonian, and the old prints from public-domain collections. The diagrams were drawn with code. Every fact was checked twice against the sources listed above before publishing. #sleep #water #science

  7. Oct 23

    How Big Is the Universe? A Calm Journey to the Edge

    Watch the full video, with images: https://youtu.be/Wtgxeu0rl30 Tonight, a long and gentle journey outward, from the sky above your window to the farthest light we can see. We learn how light itself becomes a measuring rod, visit the nearest stars, and drift along the great river of the Milky Way. We follow the patient people who learned the distances, meet our neighbor galaxies and the cosmic web that joins them, and watch the universe slowly expand. Then the oldest light of all, the quiet deep fields full of galaxies, and the edge of what we can see, before we come softly home again. There is nothing to remember and nothing to do. Just listen, and drift off. 0:00 Good Evening, Looking Up 11:46 Measuring with Light 23:18 The Nearest Stars 34:49 The River of Stars 46:06 How We Learned the Distances 57:52 Our Neighbor Galaxies 1:09:53 The Cosmic Web 1:22:09 The Expanding Universe 1:33:59 The Oldest Light 1:45:02 The Deep Fields 1:56:25 The Edge of What We Can See 2:07:24 Small and Large, and Good Night Sources NASA Science, NASA Goddard (Imagine the Universe, LAMBDA, COBE and WMAP) and NASA JPL: science.nasa.gov, imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov, lambda.gsfc.nasa.gov, jpl.nasa.gov European Space Agency and ESA/Hubble: esa.int, sci.esa.int (Gaia, Planck, Hipparcos); ESO and NSF NOIRLab: eso.org, noirlab.edu The Nobel Prize pages (nobelprize.org); Royal Museums Greenwich; Mount Wilson Observatory; Chandra X-ray Center; Caltech IPAC Peer-reviewed papers and preprints through arXiv and the publishers' pages; American Physical Society and Physics Today (history of the discoveries) Images Hubble: NASA, ESA and the teams named on each image (the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA), the HUDF Team, S. Beckwith, G. Illingworth, D. Magee, P. Oesch, R. Bouwens, K. Whitaker, the Hubble Key Project Team and the High-Z Supernova Search Team, the HFF Team, J. Lotz, M. Mountain, A. Koekemoer, B. Williams, Z. Chen, L. C. Johnson, M. Durbin, J. Dalcanton, A. Calamida, K. Sahu and the SWEEPS Science Team, A. Lessing, M. Shara, W. Blair, J. DePasquale; acknowledgments P. Knezek, H. Bond, D. Carter, E. Baltz). Webb: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, the Webb ERO Production Team, the JADES Collaboration, C. Williams, S. Tacchella, M. Maseda, J. Diego, B. Frye, P. Kamieneski, R. Hurt, S. Crowe, J. DePasquale, A. Koekemoer, A. Pagan; NASA/David Higginbotham. Other NASA images: NASA/JPL-Caltech, NASA/JPL-Caltech/STScI, NASA/JPL/University of Arizona, NASA/JPL/STScI Hubble Deep Field Team, NASA/COBE Science Team, NASA/LAMBDA Archive Team (WMAP Science Team), NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center (Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter data), NASA/NOAA/GSFC/Suomi NPP/VIIRS/Norman Kuring, NASA/Don Pettit, NASA/Chris Williams, NASA/Bill Ingalls, NASA/Ben Smegelsky. Public-domain prints and photographs: Galileo, Sidereus Nuncius (1610, Smithsonian Libraries); Sidney Hall, Urania's Mirror (1824, Library of Congress); E. L. Trouvelot (1881, New York Public Library); Isaac Roberts (1888, ETH-Bibliothek Zurich); Camille Flammarion, L'Atmosphere (1888); Charles Graham (1893) and Detroit Publishing Co. (c. 1902), Library of Congress; Popular Science Monthly (1897); Harvard College Observatory (c. 1899); George Ellery Hale, Astrophysical Journal (1908). NASA images are in the public domain or used under NASA's media guidelines with the credits above, and the old prints and photographs are in the public domain. Their use does not imply endorsement by NASA, ESA or any other agency or library. About this video The narration, the music and some of the images were created with AI tools (Google Gemini). The AI images are artistic impressions. The photographs come from NASA and its telescopes and missions, and the old prints and photographs from public-domain collections. The diagrams were drawn with code. Every fact was checked twice against the sources listed above before publishing. #sleep #universe #space

  8. Oct 20

    The Quiet Wonders of the Human Body

    Watch the full video, with images: https://youtu.be/jrq2Br8utR8 Tonight, a slow and gentle journey inward, through the human body, the one place you have lived in all your life. We begin with the tens of trillions of cells that make you, then follow the breath down its quiet tree of branches and listen to the steady heart with its two soft notes. We drift along the rivers of the blood, visit the living frame of the bones and the muscles that move in gentle pairs, and pass through the quiet kitchen of digestion. Then the windows of the senses, the skin and its warmth, the brain softly lit, the body through the night, and a body always renewing itself. There is nothing to remember and nothing to do. Just listen, and drift off. 0:00 Good Evening, a Journey Inward 11:14 The Gift of the Breath 22:25 The Steady Heart 33:25 Rivers Within 44:50 The Living Frame 56:40 Muscles and Gentle Movement 1:08:10 The Quiet Kitchen 1:19:46 The Windows of the Senses 1:31:29 Skin, Warmth and the Body's Climate 1:43:09 The Brain, Softly Lit 1:54:27 The Body Through the Night 2:06:02 A Body Always Renewing, and Good Night Sources OpenStax, Anatomy and Physiology 2e (Rice University): openstax.org U.S. National Institutes of Health: NHLBI, NINDS, NIGMS, NIAMS, NIDCD, NEI (nhlbi.nih.gov, ninds.nih.gov, nigms.nih.gov) and MedlinePlus (medlineplus.gov); NCI SEER Training (training.seer.cancer.gov) Cleveland Clinic, Merck Manuals, NHS, InformedHealth.org, Webvision (University of Utah) and the Nobel Prize pages (nobelprize.org) Peer-reviewed papers in PLOS Biology, PNAS, Nature, Chest, the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine and others, read through Europe PMC and PubMed Central Images U.S. National Park Service (NPGallery): Zion (NPS/Jonathan Fortner), Acadia (NPS/Lisa Girardin), Kalaupapa (NPS/Glauco Puig-Santana), Wind Cave (NPS/Ken Geu), Saint Croix (NPS/Pete Wintersteen), and Cape Hatteras, Cedar Breaks, Curecanti, Denali, Gates of the Arctic, Glacier Bay, Lassen Volcanic, Noatak, Sequoia and Kings Canyon, Sleeping Bear Dunes and Yosemite (NPS). NASA: astronaut photography from the Johnson Space Center (including Mike Fossum and Jack Fischer), NASA/GSFC/Solar Dynamics Observatory, NASA/JPL-Caltech/STScI/CXC/SAO. U.S. National Institutes of Health: National Cancer Institute (Bruce Wetzel and Harry Schaefer; NCI Visuals Online) and NIDCD (Elizabeth Carroll Driver, Ph.D.). U.S. Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service (Peggy Greb, Bob Nichols, Keith Weller; Eric Erbe and Christopher Pooley). Smithsonian Open Access (CC0): National Museum of American History and National Museum of Natural History. Public-domain prints and plates, Wellcome Collection: Steven Blankaart (1686), Gérard de Lairesse for Govert Bidloo, Antonie van Leeuwenhoek (1722), Thomas Willis (1672), Theodor Schwann (1839), Salomon Stricker (1871), the Encyclopédie of Diderot and d'Alembert, Andrew Bell, Thomas Milton, George Kirtland, Friedrich Foedisch, John Alfred Vinter, H. J. Ruprecht, Léon Foucault (1844) and Sir Arthur Schuster (1896). Robert Hooke, Micrographia (1665), Francis Galton, Finger Prints (1892) and Santiago Ramón y Cajal (1909), from the Biodiversity Heritage Library and the Internet Archive. The photographs are works of the U.S. Government or Smithsonian Open Access (CC0) images, and the old prints and plates are in the public domain. Their use does not imply endorsement by any agency, museum or library. About this video The narration, the music and some of the images were created with AI tools (Google Gemini). The softly glowing AI images of the body are artistic impressions, not medical illustrations. The photographs come from the U.S. National Park Service, NASA, the National Institutes of Health, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Smithsonian, and the old plates from public-domain books in the Wellcome Collection and the Biodiversity Heritage Library. The diagrams were drawn with code. Every fact was checked twice against the sources listed above before publishing. This video is for rest and curiosity only, and it is not medical advice. #sleep #humanbody #science

  9. Oct 17

    Earth in the Age of the Dinosaurs, Told Slowly

    Watch the full video, with images: https://youtu.be/BkP8OqUDuAo Tonight, a slow walk back through deep time, to the long age of the dinosaurs. We begin in a world without flowers, when all the land was one great continent, and meet the first small dinosaurs of the Triassic. We watch Pangaea slowly drift apart, walk beside the long-necked giants, find the first feathers and the first birds, and visit the quiet seas of the ichthyosaurs and the fossil shores of Mary Anning. Then flowers open across the Cretaceous world, parents settle on their nests, and we learn how scientists came to know these animals at all, before the age closes gently and the birds carry it on. There is nothing to remember and nothing to do. Just listen, and drift off. 0:00 Good Evening, a Walk Back in Time 11:21 A World Without Flowers 22:45 The First Dinosaurs 34:03 Pangaea Slowly Drifts Apart 45:35 The Long-Necked Giants 57:42 Feathers and the First Birds 1:09:47 The Sea Dragons and the Fossil Hunter 1:21:46 The World Bursts into Flower 1:34:03 Nests, Eggs and Family Life 1:45:44 Big and Small, Slow and Swift 1:57:51 How We Came to Know Them 2:09:58 The Closing of an Age, and Good Night Sources Natural History Museum, London: nhm.ac.uk University of California Museum of Paleontology: ucmp.berkeley.edu U.S. National Park Service (Petrified Forest, Dinosaur National Monument) and U.S. Geological Survey: nps.gov, usgs.gov, pubs.usgs.gov Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, Field Museum, American Museum of Natural History, Royal Tyrrell Museum, Oxford University Museum of Natural History International Commission on Stratigraphy (chronostratigraphic chart): stratigraphy.org; NASA (the Chicxulub crater and Earth science): science.nasa.gov Peer-reviewed papers in Nature, Science, Proceedings of the Royal Society, Acta Palaeontologica Polonica and others, through PubMed Central and the publishers' pages Images U.S. National Park Service (NPGallery): Petrified Forest National Park (NPS/Hallie Larsen, NPS/Stuart Holmes, NPS/Andrew V Kearns, NPS/Andy Bridges), Dinosaur National Monument (NPS/Jake Holgerson, NPS/Erin Cahill, NPS/Jacob W. Frank), Grand Canyon (NPS/Michael Quinn), Yellowstone (NPS/Neal Herbert, NPS/John Good, NPS/Jacob W. Frank), Olympic (NPS/J. Preston), and other parks and preserves (NPS/Christopher Vuille-Kowing, NPS/Kelsey Sucena, NPS/Tyler Kuliberda, NPS/Gabby Napolitano, NPS/Scott Sharaga, NPS/Layla Neal, NPS/Riley McAvoy, NPS/Alyssa Mattei, H. Bradburn/NPS). NASA (Operation IceBridge, NASA/Jim Yungel; MODIS on Terra, NASA Goddard; NASA/JPL, the Chicxulub crater; NASA Earth Observatory/Joshua Stevens with USGS Landsat data; astronaut Donald R. Pettit), NOAA NCEI (ETOPO1), Bureau of Land Management Utah. Smithsonian Open Access (CC0): National Museum of Natural History, Department of Paleobiology, and Smithsonian Institution Archives, Record Unit 95. Public-domain prints and drawings: O. C. Marsh, The Dinosaurs of North America (USGS, 1896); W. Dames (1884); E. Hitchcock, Ichnology of New England (photograph by J. L. Lovell); G. Mantell, The Fossils of the South Downs (engraved by Mary Ann Mantell, 1822); W. Buckland and the Geological Society of London (1824); R. Plot (1677); William Smith's map of 1815 (York Museums Trust); G. Lavalette's Bernissart drawing (1882, Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences); The Illustrated London News (1854); Thomas Girtin (Yale Center for British Art); Flore des serres (1862 to 1865); Library of Congress Photochrom Collection. Scans from the Biodiversity Heritage Library and the Internet Archive. The photographs are works of the U.S. Government or Smithsonian Open Access (CC0) images, and the old prints are in the public domain. Their use does not imply endorsement by any agency or museum. About this video The narration, the music and some of the images were created with AI tools (Google Gemini). The AI images of living dinosaurs are artistic impressions based on current science. The photographs come from the U.S. National Park Service, NASA, NOAA, the Bureau of Land Management and the Smithsonian, and the old plates from public-domain books. The diagrams were drawn with code. Every fact was checked twice against the sources listed above before publishing. #sleep #dinosaurs #science

  10. Oct 14

    A Slow Journey Through the Solar System

    Watch the full video, with images: https://youtu.be/rc6ylbGv4Xg Tonight, a slow and gentle journey across our solar system, from the warm light of the Sun to the quiet edge where its wind finally fades. We drift past swift little Mercury and cloud-veiled Venus, look back at our small blue home, cross the rusty plains of Mars and the wide, empty belt of small worlds, and wander among the giants: Jupiter and its moons, Saturn and its rings of ice, Uranus rolling on its side and windy Neptune. Then on to Pluto's pale heart, the two Voyagers and the faint Oort Cloud. There is nothing to remember and nothing to do. Just listen, and drift off. 0:00 Good Evening, Setting Out 11:23 The Sun, Our Quiet Star 23:13 Mercury, the Swift Little World 35:05 Venus, the Veiled Sister 46:52 Home, Seen from Far Away 58:02 Mars, the Rusty Red World 1:10:38 The Belt of Small Worlds 1:22:32 Jupiter, the Gentle Giant 1:34:32 Saturn and Its Rings of Ice 1:46:45 Uranus and Neptune, the Quiet Ice Giants 1:58:34 Pluto and the Frozen Borderlands 2:09:59 To the Edge, and Good Night Sources NASA Science and the NASA planetary fact sheets: science.nasa.gov, nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory: jpl.nasa.gov, ssd.jpl.nasa.gov (Voyager, Cassini, Juno, Dawn, Mars rovers, Magellan, Mariner) European Space Agency: esa.int (Cassini-Huygens, BepiColombo, Venus Express, Juice); JAXA (Akatsuki, Mio) International Astronomical Union and the USGS Gazetteer of Planetary Nomenclature: planetarynames.wr.usgs.gov NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center (auroras); NASA Johnson Space Center (Earth seen from orbit) Smithsonian Institution and NASA (the Voyage scale model); Lowell Observatory (Clyde Tombaugh and Pluto); Herschel Museum of Astronomy, Bath Brown and Schaller, Science 2007 (the mass of Eris); Irwin and colleagues, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 2024 (the true colors of Uranus and Neptune) Images NASA mission photographs: Cassini (NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute), Voyager, Mariner and Magellan (NASA/JPL), Viking and Voyager mosaics (NASA/JPL/USGS), Galileo (NASA/JPL/DLR, NASA/JPL/University of Arizona, NASA/JPL-Caltech/SETI Institute), Juno (NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS), Dawn (NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA/PSI), Mars rovers (NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS, NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS/Texas A&M Univ.), HiRISE (NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona), Solar Dynamics Observatory (NASA/GSFC/SDO, NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/SDO/Genna Duberstein), DSCOVR EPIC, the International Space Station and Artemis II (NASA, NASA/Chris Williams). Other NASA photographs: NASA/Bill Ingalls (Mercury crossing the Sun, 2016; Venus and the Moon, 2026), NASA/Aubrey Gemignani (total solar eclipse, 2017), NASA/Erika Blumenfeld and Joseph Aebersold (the Bennu sample), NASA/JPL-Caltech/KSC (the launch of Voyager 1). Titan's seas: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASI/USGS. Illustrations and visualizations: NASA/JPL-Caltech (Dawn, Juno, Europa Clipper, Cassini, Voyager, the Golden Record, a young star's disk), NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU (Psyche), NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio (Bennu). NASA images are in the public domain. Their use does not imply endorsement by NASA or any other agency. About this video The narration, the music and some of the images were created with AI tools (Google Gemini). The photographs come from NASA and its missions. The diagrams were drawn with code. Every fact was checked twice against the sources listed above before publishing. #sleep #space #solarsystem

  11. Oct 11

    100 Calm Facts About the Deep Ocean

    Watch the full video, with images: https://youtu.be/Ll6VI6S7JhI Tonight, a slow journey down into the deep ocean, one hundred quiet facts at a time: the layers of light and darkness, the deepest place on Earth, the snow that never stops falling, the little lanterns of the deep, the great nightly rise of living things, warm springs on the seafloor, gentle giants, ancient gardens of coral and glass, and the songs that travel across the sea. There is nothing to remember and nothing to do. Just listen, and drift off. 0:00 Good Evening, the Great Blue Deep 10:55 Down Through the Layers of Light 22:07 The Deepest Place on Earth 32:28 The Gentle Weight of Water 43:04 The Snow That Never Stops Falling 54:11 Lanterns in the Dark 1:05:47 The Great Nightly Rise 1:16:43 Warm Springs on the Seafloor 1:28:43 Gentle Giants of the Deep 1:41:03 Slow Gardens of Coral and Glass 1:52:17 Mountains, Maps and Rivers in the Sea 2:03:55 Songs Across the Sea, and Good Night Sources NOAA Ocean Exploration: oceanexplorer.noaa.gov NOAA National Ocean Service and NOAA Fisheries: oceanservice.noaa.gov, fisheries.noaa.gov Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution: whoi.edu; Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute: mbari.org U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command (the Trieste, 1960); U.S. Geological Survey; Seabed 2030 and the IHO (seafloor mapping, April 2026) Yancey and colleagues, PNAS 2014 (TMAO and the depth limit for fish) Last and colleagues, Current Biology 2016 (Arctic plankton following the Moon) Schorr and colleagues, PLOS ONE 2014 (Cuvier's beaked whale dives) Kendall-Bar and colleagues, Science 2023 (how elephant seals sleep) Nielsen and colleagues, Science 2016 (the age of the Greenland shark) Kubodera and Mori, Proceedings of the Royal Society B 2005 (the first photographs of a live giant squid) Robison, Seibel and Drazen, PLOS ONE 2014 (the longest egg-brooding known) Roark and colleagues, PNAS 2009 (the ages of deep-sea corals) Payne and McVay, Science 1971 (the songs of humpback whales) Images Photographs from NOAA Ocean Exploration (Office of Ocean Exploration and Research), Okeanos Explorer expeditions 2011 to 2026: image courtesy of NOAA Ocean Exploration. NOAA Fisheries and National Marine Sanctuaries: Tim Cole (NMFS), David Csepp, Matt Wilson and Jay Clark, Brandi Noble (NOAA/NMFS), Robert Schwemmer, Ed Lyman (NOAA, permit 15240); NOAA Photo Library (Challenger engraving, 1885); NOAA NCEI ETOPO1 relief maps. NASA: Apollo 17 (AS17-148-22727), Space Shuttle (41G-13-032), International Space Station (ISS071-E-456772); NASA Ocean Color Group (Norman Kuring); NASA Earth Observatory (Lauren Dauphin, Wanmei Liang), with Landsat data from the U.S. Geological Survey. U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command (NH 96797, NH 96805); U.S. Coast Guard (Tara Molle); U.S. Geological Survey (Laney White, K. Lynn). World map in the diagrams: NASA Blue Marble. These photographs are works of the U.S. Government and are in the public domain. Their use does not imply endorsement by NOAA, NASA or any other agency. About this video The narration, the music and some of the images were created with AI tools (Google Gemini). The photographs come from NOAA, NASA, the U.S. Navy, the U.S. Coast Guard and the USGS. The diagrams were drawn with code. Every fact was checked twice against the sources listed above before publishing. #sleep #ocean #science

  12. Oct 8

    The Moon, Explained Slowly

    Watch the full video, with images: https://youtu.be/eEbEKXBPfmc Tonight, a slow and gentle journey around the Moon: how it was born, why it drifts away from us, why it always shows us the same face, its seas of ancient lava and its countless craters, the ice hidden in its shadows, the people and machines that have visited it, the tides it raises in our oceans, and the quiet play of light that gives us its phases and eclipses. There is nothing to remember and nothing to do. Just listen, and drift off. 0:00 Good Evening, Our Closest Neighbor 10:21 How the Moon Was Born 21:13 The Young Moon and Its Slow Drift Away 31:58 Always the Same Face 42:33 Seas That Were Never Water 53:05 A World of Craters 1:04:19 The Surface Up Close 1:15:38 Ice in the Shadows 1:26:43 The Visitors 1:38:16 The Moon and the Earth 1:49:29 Light and Shadow 2:00:25 Good Night Sources NASA Science, the Moon: science.nasa.gov/moon NASA Space Science Data Coordinated Archive, Moon fact sheet: nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/factsheet/moonfact.html Lunar and Planetary Institute: lpi.usra.edu USGS Gazetteer of Planetary Nomenclature: planetarynames.wr.usgs.gov NOAA National Ocean Service, tides and water levels: oceanservice.noaa.gov OpenStax Astronomy 2e, chapter 9: openstax.org Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera: lroc.im-ldi.com Meyers and Malinverno, PNAS 2018 (length of day 1.4 billion years ago) Colaprete and colleagues, Science 2010 (LCROSS water) Stephenson and colleagues, Proceedings of the Royal Society A 2016 (ancient eclipses) Laskar, Joutel and Robutel, Nature 1993; Lissauer and colleagues, Icarus 2012 (Earth's tilt) Greer and colleagues, Geochemical Perspectives Letters 2023 (Apollo 17 zircon) Yuan and colleagues, Nature 2023; Kegerreis and colleagues, ApJ Letters 2022 (Moon formation) Images NASA photographs: Apollo 8 Earthrise (AS08-14-2383); Apollo 10 (AS10-31-4537); Apollo 11 (AS11-40-5878, AS11-40-5899, AS11-40-5948, AS11-44-6551, AS11-44-6642) and its launch (MSFC 8909250); Apollo 12 (AS12-47-6876); Apollo 14 (AS14-67-9386); Apollo 15 (AS15-88-11901, S71-42955, S71-44671); Apollo 16 (AS16-118-18947); Apollo 17 (AS17-137-20990, S73-22871); Artemis II (art002e014055, art002e024603); LCROSS (KSC-2009-1745); lunar sample laboratory, Johnson Space Center (jsc2019e023774, James Blair); SOFIA (ED07-0100-09, Jim Ross). Total solar eclipse 2017 (NASA/Aubrey Gemignani); total lunar eclipse 2025 (NASA/Jordan Cochran); blue supermoon 2024 (NASA/Michael DeMocker). Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter images: NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University (far side, north pole, Tycho, Apollo 14 site PIA12897); full Moon visualization from LRO data: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center; LRO illustration: NASA/GSFC (PIA18163). The Moon crossing the Earth, DSCOVR/EPIC: NASA/NOAA. South pole mosaic, Clementine: NASA/JPL/USGS (PIA00001), grid lines removed. Photos from the International Space Station (ISS051-E-39977, ISS059-E-59149, ISS071-E-67226, ISS074-E-208832): Image courtesy of the Earth Science and Remote Sensing Unit, NASA Johnson Space Center. Moon and Earth maps in the diagrams: NASA Scientific Visualization Studio (CGI Moon Kit, LRO data) and NASA Earth Observatory (Blue Marble). NASA images are in the public domain. Their use does not imply NASA's endorsement. About this video The narration, the music, some of the images and a few short video clips were created with AI tools (Google Gemini). The photographs and the maps of the Moon and the Earth come from NASA. The diagrams were drawn with code. Every fact was checked against the sources listed above before publishing. #sleep #moon #science

  • 12 Episodes

About

Long, calm science journeys, read slowly, to help you fall asleep. One gentle subject each night, from the Moon and the stars to the deep ocean, volcanoes, forests and the creatures of our planet. There is nothing to remember and nothing to do: just listen, and drift off. Narration is AI-generated, from scripts built on NASA, NOAA, USGS and peer-reviewed sources. The full videos, with images, are on YouTube.

Information

  • Creator
    Science by Moonlight
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    12
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Science by Moonlight
  • Show Website
    Science by Moonlight