Science Museum of Virginia

What’s got eyes, butts, and cascading mental implications? This week’s science story! As we continue to be socially distanced from one another, it feels like nearly any form of connection is welcome at this point. Simply making eye contact actually has a myriad of benefits for us humans, but first…let’s chat about some related but very different eye contact research.

As hurricane season continues to move forward we see continue to see more reports about tropical storms. We recently just saw a lot of news about a powerful storm that moved up the East coast and climate experts are telling us the season's just getting started.

Science often studies the relationships between physical objects, chemicals, or even how theoretical information interacts with other theoretical information. Okay, but what about our own relationships? Romantic relationships have long been a part of the human story, but how well have we really studied them?

It turns out that there are some physiological mechanisms that can help explain why stress-eating junk food makes us feel better.

In human history, the sighting of comets has often been associated with a lot of doom and gloom like turbulent political tensions and uncontrollable diseases! T

Science is often a great way to find solutions to modern day issues. We've figured out how to easily communicate with folks around the world, 3-D print parts for a space station, and through many contributions have increased the quality of life in many places around the globe. The novel coronavirus though has given us a whole new challenge. Top experts are busy working on a vaccine, but till then what do scientists around the world suggest we do?

As life on Earth continues to carry on we still find occasional moments in the night to look up at the blanket of stars above us and wonder if any life is out there looking back at us wondering the same thing

The global pandemic currently makes it so we can’t go visit exotic places, but sometimes pieces of the exotic places come to us! A whole bunch of Saharan dust is heading our way. Will there be Saharan dust in the weather?

Over the years many housing policies and planning practices have shaped how neighborhoods and cities in our nation have grown. Sadly, many of these decisions were made using unfairly derived metrics and survey results. Now science is being used to show the relationships between various neighborhoods, their historic policies, and their current quality of life.

This has come with some public criticism including how some folks can’t seem to recognize each other without their noses and mouths being clearly visible.