Watch a two-year time-lapse of a pinecone seed transforming into a pine tree.

A timelapse of sprouting seeds

Germination is the process where an organism sprouts from a seed or spore. This timelapse captures the process in an inspiring, two-minute video so you can see the whole story of the seed quickly.

From seed to pumpkin, a 3-minute time-lapse

Pumpkins are atypically enormous winter squashes, meaning they are harvested in the fall and then remain edible throughout winter. See how it all happens with this mesmerizing, music-backed time-lapse showcasing a pumpkin's 120-day journey from...

Watch a time-lapse from space of photosynthesis across Earth

Using NASA satellite imagery, carbon absorption can be tracked and serves as a proxy for photosynthetic activity on land and in the oceans. Over the course of a year, seasonal changes can be observed as plants become dormant in the fall and active again in the spring.

Watch an animation of Arctic sea ice grow to its maximum

Each year, Arctic sea ice freezes over millions of square miles amid colder temperatures. This 1-minute animation depicts that process using data from the winter of 2022-23.

Watch a salamander grow from fertilization to hatching

New microscopy techniques have allowed scientists to image the development of animal embryos with unprecedented detail. This six-minute time-lapse reveals the development of a salamander from initial fertilization to hatching from an egg.

The weather time machine

A fun interactive on how old ships’ logs are giving scientists new insights into the past and future of the Earth’s changing climate (w/maps and pictures).

The world's largest Torrey pine is in Santa Barbara County

Torrey pines are extremely rare—believed to be endemic to just two pockets of California coast. In Carpinteria, to the southeast of Santa Barbara, stands the Woodholme Torrey pine, the world's tallest at 126 feet, first planted in 1883.

Tree rings can reveal centuries of environmental change and natural events

The width and shape of tree rings reflect yearly growth conditions like rainfall or snowfall. Scars in the rings can record disruptions such as fires, avalanches, or earthquakes, explaining when and how those events occurred.

How trees transport water from roots to leaves

Trees move water to their extremities via a deft system starting from the roots to the leaves. See how it works in this short video breaking down the process in a Douglas fir.

Watch a time-lapse of staghorn coral polyps—a type of hard coral—over several weeks in an aquarium, slowly forming the foundational component of a coral reef.

The life of a pistachio

Pistachios—which are actually a seed, not a nut—are a superfood with lots of great fat, fiber, antioxidants, and more, and is listed as a complete protein. Originally from the Middle East, the seed was imported to the US where California has become the leading grower in the world. Harvested once a year around October, the flavor is having a bit of a moment both for its taste and nutrition. Watch more here.

Watch 1 billion years of tectonic plate movement in 40 seconds

Researchers at the University of Sydney developed the model, incorporating changing plate boundaries rather than just moving continents, to better understand the changes to biological and climatic systems throughout Earth’s history.

The Arctic is greening from rising temperatures

This one-minute video summarizes a new study that used satellite data to look at plant life across the entire Arctic area for the first time. It found that from 1985 to 2016, 38% of the areas studied—including parts of Alaska, Canada, and...

Explore a map of changing tree cover gains and losses around the world since 2000.

Watch insects and animal pollinators in slow motion

Louie Schwartzberg's "Moving Art" series showcases slow-motion footage of oceans, forests, deserts, flowers, and more. In this excerpt, organisms such as bats, monarch butterflies, bees, and hummingbirds are shown interacting with one another and with flowering plants.

Watch an AI-generated short film

The Waymark production company created "The Frost" using the AI platform DALL-E 2. Set in an apocalyptic future where the weather has been stalled, the film was made by stitching together hundreds of clips, each only a few seconds long.

Thirty weird facts about Christmas trees

From its fascinating origin to how yours is grown today, these incredible Christmas tree facts will add a little bit more wonder to your holiday season.

Wind helps trees develop resistance to collapse

Scientists at Biosphere 2 found that trees grew faster in the facility than those in the wild but collapsed more quickly when replanted outdoors. Researchers uncovered that trees build resistance when pushed and pulled due to wind stress, strengthening their foundational root systems.

Why we have different seasons

Visualize just how exactly seasons come to be with this animation of the earth in relation to the sun, and see how earth's tilt determines our seasons.

Here's why you've never eaten a banana seed

Hank loves bananas and is worried about their future, so he did some investigating and wrote this four-minute episode of SciShow to share some kind of scary banana truths with us.

Watch the birth of a tornado in real time

While driving through suburban Oklahoma in May 2013, National Geographic explorer and storm researcher Tim Samaras witnessed the formation of a tornado from a thunderstorm and captured footage of the descending funnel cloud before it touched down.

See how artificial Christmas trees are made

Modern artificial Christmas trees are built from bent steel frames and PVC plastic. The plastic is cut into strips and shredded to mimic the needles of an evergreen tree. See the factory process of these mass-produced holiday mainstays.

Biosphere 2 revealed limitations in maintaining wildlife in unfamiliar environments

Trees appeared to become weak and more prone to breaking because a lack of wind caused them to no longer need to develop stress wood. The extinction of pollinators—potentially due to an explosion in the population of longhorn crazy ants—was also unexpected.

Visualize a model of all of time, where our lives span less than the width of a human hair

The massive model was built across a Mojave Desert lake bed using 800 lights spaced just 10 meters apart. Within the model, the entirety of human civilization appears only in the final centimeter.

Why giant sequoias need fire to grow

Giant sequoias are the largest trees on Earth, living for upward of 3,000 years—and without fire, they couldn't reproduce. Regular fires help create space in the forest, while its heat opens up the sequoia cones, releasing the seeds onto the newly...

Watch a time-lapse of 3D printing a Groot figurine

The total printing time on the Prusa i3 MK2 printer was 12 hours and 32 minutes, with the head alone taking nearly 5 hours to print from layering plastic filament.

Listen to audio recordings of forests from around the world, featuring birds chirping, water flowing, and wind flowing through the trees.

NASA satellite data and sound recordings used to assess rainforest health

This two-minute video describes the work of scientists who are analyzing the impact of repeated forest fires in the Amazon by recording the unique sounds in degraded forests. The team is using acoustic sensors to record sounds of wildlife in the...

Experience over 100 years of basketball history with a visual, interactive timeline.

Explore the effects of tornadoes of different scales

In this simulation, users can adjust the tornado's diameter and rotation speed to see its impact as it passes through a series of trees and a one-story home.

Watch a tour of a 3D visualization of the Pillars of Creation

Combining observational data from the Hubble and James Webb Space Telescopes has allowed NASA scientists to create a multiwavelength model of the star-forming region at the heart of the Eagle nebula.

Watch a 4K time-lapse of auroras seen from the International Space Station

The video was created from 711 photos taken by European Space Agency astronaut Paolo Nespoli on Sept. 15, 2017, as part of the Vitality, Innovation, Technology, and Ability mission.

Watch how dozens of everyday human tasks are performed in space

This playlist features clips of astronauts aboard the International Space Station explaining how they cook, eat, sleep, and conduct research in microgravity. Other activities to pass the time, including watering plants and playing soccer, are also shown.

The complexity of classifying a tree

It may seem obvious to us when we see a tree, but very specific characteristics cause scientists to distinguish trees from other types of plants. This video provides a visual and verbal explanation of distinctions that separate trees from other plants like shrubs or herbs. See a scientific breakdown of these traits.

Take a series of virtual tours of Biosphere 2

The videos provide a 360-degree view of the indoor rainforest, ocean ecosystem, Landscape Evolution Observatory, and underground technosphere. A Google Maps Street View option is available to explore additional biomes, with each associated with a different floor level on the bottom right.

As of 2025, scientists at B2 study the heat tolerance of cacao and coffee trees

The research at Biosphere 2 has led to the development of low-cost plant monitors, which can be provided to farmers worldwide to enable more precise monitoring of crops. Geodesic domes built within the ocean biome are used to investigate the best architectural structures for repopulating degraded reefs.

Travel through deep time with this interactive Earth

Explore key moments in Earth’s transformative history as continents drift and climate fluctuates over 4.6 billion years. The Smithsonian presents a series of interactive snapshots of the earth. From its toddler years during the Hadean period, when its surface was mostly molten, to the mostly unidentifiable landmasses of the future earth, 100 million years from now.

Examine this captivating animation 'building' a human—illustrating the roughly 40 weeks of fetal development.

An animated short film portraying the arc of addiction

This simple yet profound award-winning animated short film uses the metaphor of a bird discovering golden nuggets to explore how addiction develops, with a special focus on the progressive nature of substance dependency. The film went viral, amassing nearly 30 million views by 2024.

This Milky Way photo took 12 years to shoot

Finnish astrophotographer J-P Metsavainio has released a Milky Way photo that took him nearly 12 years to create. The 1.7-gigapixel image has a cumulative

Watch live cams of wild birds feeding

If you're curious to see what albatross, red-tailed hawks, and hummingbirds are up to this very minute, explore different live cams of them feeding. Occasionally, you'll catch a squirrel joining in on the meal.

Read a firsthand account of a participant in the first Biosphere 2 mission

The first crew of “Biospherians” spent four months growing their own wheat and awaiting the ripening of tomatoes, onions, and peppers to make their own pizza. They also raised their own livestock, including chickens, pigs, and two goats named Milky Way and Stardust.

Watch a tour of an integrated circuit fabrication plant

Explore the protocols in place to ensure clean rooms have no dust to jeopardize the integrity of silicon wafers as they are transformed into working microchips. Layering, photolithography, etching, and chemical vapor deposition are shown alongside digital visualizations.

Watch a digital archive of David Attenborough's 'Planet Earth' miniseries

Created over five years, the production was the first documentary series to be filmed in high definition and, when released in 2006, the BBC's most expensive nature documentary series. The Emmy Award-winning series featured 11 episodes, each focused on a different Earth biome.

Watch a tech demo of the world's first consumer graphics processing unit, the Nvidia GeForce 256, released Oct. 11, 1999.

Grasp the earth's orbit around the sun with this interactive

See why seasons exist with this interactive simulator. Toggle between different views of the earth in relation to the sun and watch as the earth's axis causes the sun to shine at different angles throughout the year, causing the weather to fluctuate and more. This simulator clarifies a process many take for granted.

Watch a video that visualizes what really happens inside a credit card network when you make a purchase.

Watch the Arecibo Observatory collapse

Watch this remarkable footage of the Arecibo Observatory's 900-ton platform falling into the 1,000-foot wide (305 meters) dish below, followed by footage from a drone coincidentally observing the cables at the time they snapped.

Famous Bigfoot footage stabilized using AI

Famous 1967 footage of a Sasquatch-like creature in a California forest has been stabilized using AI, clearly revealing the Bigfoot-esque creature to be a man in a suit.

Biological terraforming studies have been conducted at Biosphere 2

The experiments involve populating barren hillslopes within the Landscape Evolution Observatory with microbes that react with air and rock to produce molecules needed by more complex organisms. Mosses and other simple plants can then grow in these spaces, gradually making them more hospitable to humans.