Brain Food

Students at Northern Arizona University are part of an experiment in virtual reality learning. They're using high=tech goggles and applications to transport themselves into ancient cultures and inside molecules for a better understanding of how our senses help us learn. 

The spring equinox is one of two days a year when the equator lines up with the center of the sun, creating a balance of day and night. Historically – for many indigenous people of the world – this celestial event marks a time for renewal, emergence of life and planting of crops. 

Kids love to play in the dirt. So Flagstaff ecologist Anita Antoninka is channeling that love into learning… using it as a way to teach kids about the effects of climate change on the earth’s biocrust. Today, she’s working with a seventh grade science class at Northland Preparatory Academy to see how a warming planet affects moss.

Scientists are dismissing a popular theory about mass extinction since the last ice age. The Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis contends an asteroid hit Earth 13,000 years ago changing the climate instantly and dramatically. Scott Anderson, a paleoecologist at Northern Arizona University, is part of an international research team that looked for evidence to support this explanation, but didn't find any.

Bach and Mozart have one. ZZ Top has one. And of course all of The Beatles have them. They are asteroids.