in a nutshell – kurzgesagt

Auroras are the beautiful side effect of solar storms! Coronal mass ejections rip millions or billions of tonnes of plasma from the Sun’s atmosphere, catapulting it through the Solar System at speeds of up to nine million kilometers per hour. When these monsters hit us … nothing happens on Earth. While even relatively small storms can damage satellites, affect radio communication or be dangerous to astronauts, for people on the surface, space weather is harmless. Earth’s atmosphere protects us from the worst effects of a solar flare by absorbing the blast of x-rays high up in the atmosphere, well before it reaches the surface. The electrified plasma from a CME is deflected by the Earth’s magnetic field, diverting the energy storm towards the north and south poles, where energetic particles fall into the atmosphere causing the atmosphere to glow and creating beautiful auroras.

The year 12,024 of the Human Era is coming to its end – and what a year it has been! Thank you for being on this journey and curiously exploring the world with us! We hope you have a wonderful end of this year and an amazing 12,025! Much love from all of us at kurzgesagt ❤

From the simple sketch to the final design, this is how we came up with the astronaut character from our video about Gravastars! 🧑🚀

Black holes are messy eaters. Stars are born from ever-faster spinning and collapsing gas, and so black holes, which form after the stars collapse, also spin. When a black hole is born from the core of a star, it keeps its angular momentum. This means that matter that gets drawn in doesn’t just fall in a straight line, but instead begins orbiting the black hole, in smaller and smaller circles going faster and faster. The result is an accretion disk where gas orbits at nearly the speed of light. Only a small amount of gas actually falls in at any given moment. Basically, black holes put a lot of food on the table and only nibble at it.

Imagine fighting off massive parasitic worms daily. Your immune system turned into a grenade-tossing army to survive. But what happens when the worms are gone? Could our supercharged immune response be the reason for modern allergies? Watch our latest video to find out: https://kgs.link/allergies

Ten years ago, in 2014, we asked if “War was Over”. Back then, the question didn’t seem so naive. It seemed violent conflict was on the decline, and the world more peaceful than ever. But the last ten years weren’t what we expected. Is humanity on the brink? Watch our analysis: https://kgs.link/war-2024

After a decade, we're entering Gargantua again, in 3... 2... 1...

Your shirts don’t have to be folded correctly, but proteins do! Proteins are made of 21 different amino acids in the human body. All of them have different charges, some are more negative and others are more positive, meaning they either repel or attract each other. When your cells build proteins, they put different amino acids together in long strings. Because of the different charges of the amino acids used, these strings begin to fold in on themselves. This folding process is so complex that we still haven’t completely understood how exactly it works, but in a nutshell, 1D strings become 3D structures. Proteins are basically 3D puzzle pieces, with a very specific shape. Its shape defines its purpose, so a protein is only able to function efficiently when it’s in its correct three-dimensional structure.

The most extreme objects in the universe might not be black holes. Meet gravastars: their shell is thinner than an atom yet tougher than anything in the universe, and their empty core is filled with energy. Watch our latest video to learn more about these mysterious cosmic objects that could change our understanding of physics forever: https://lnkd.in/eUZNeMAJ

Our animated dinosaur can walk without a skeleton, but not without a properly adjusted rig. 🦖