Just this month, Greg Brown and Mitch Moffitt, the hosts of the popular YouTube science show AsapSCIENCE, came out as a gay couple to viewers in a new video. We’re so pleased that this pair can come out in a proud and public way—for it was not always thus. It being Pride Month, we wanted to take a brief look at the experiences of LGBT people in science. While you might assume that science would be a more enlightened and welcoming field for people of different orientations and gender presentations, history tells a different story. Even very recently, scientists have had to keep their identities hidden to avoid hurting their careers, or endangering their lives.

The comic rappers behind the web series “Epic Rap Battles of History” came out with a new installment, pitting Sir Isaac Newton (“Weird Al” Yankovic) against Bill Nye (“Nice Peter”), with an assist by Neil deGrasse Tyson (Jurassic 5’s Chali 2na). But the rhymes flow so fast that you might miss some of the neat scientific and historical references. We’ve got you covered, though: 00:11: Why is it Sir Isaac Newton, anyway? Newton was knighted by England’s Queen Anne in 1705, ostensibly for his scientific achievements, but actually more as a political power play. Newton’s patron, Charles Montagu, the First Earl of Halifax, arranged the knighthood to bolster Newton’s reputation before a parliamentary election. Unfortunately, Newton ended up losing anyway. 00:15: “Of all the scientific minds in history/ They put Beaker in a bow tie up against me?”: Newton is unfavorably comparing Bill Nye to the Muppet Beaker, the lab assistant to Dr. Bunsen Honeydew, who speaks mostly in “meep”s. 00:20: “You’re no match for me/You got a bach degree”: Bill Nye does, indeed, hold only a Bachelor of Science from Cornell University (not counting various honorary degrees). He began working as an engineer at Boeing right after college. 00:22: …

There are lots of ways to be a dad in the animal kingdom. But as you’ll see, we’d probably find it a bit nicer to have a dad who’s like an Emperor Penguin, rather than one who would eat you up no matter what kind of tie you get him for Father’s Day. Here’s a look at some of the Fathers of the Year in the animal kingdom… plus a few that aren’t quite as nice. Owl Monkeys Stand By Their Ladies These primates are the under-appreciated dads of the animal kingdom. They tote their babies around pretty much all the time, except for when they latch onto mom to nurse. Also, male owl monkeys are steadfast mates, according to Stony Brook University primatologist Patricia Wright. DNA fingerprinting shows that the species is truly monogamous—a rarity, given that many animals thought to “mate for life,” like swans, will occasionally dally with others. But paternity tests in the field show that an owl monkey stands by his mate and raises his own kids. Seahorses Carry The Weight Just because they’re the poster child for fathering in the wild is no reason not to honor the seahorse dad, who is there for his …

At the 2014 World Science Festival, WNYC radio journalist John Hockenberry compared searching for alien life to searching for and settling into a new home: You need a real estate agent (an astronomer to find the right planet), an interior decorator (a planetary scientist to assess whether the environment is hospitable to life), a chef to check if there are the right ingredients in the kitchen (a biochemist), and an accountant to juggle all the numbers and make sure you’re looking in the right neighborhood (a physicist or computer scientist). Thankfully, the Festival panel Alien Life: Will We Know It When We See It? had all those essential ingredients in place: Harvard astronomer Dimitar Sasselov, MIT planetary scientist Sara Seager, Howard Hughes Medical Institute geneticist and biochemist Jack Szostak, and Arizona State University physicist Paul Davies. Hockenberry, who moderated the panel, asked the team to rate just how close we might be to discovering extraterrestrials.

Ask a meteorologist about the 1996 tornado thriller Twister, and they’ll either find it packed with howl-inducing inaccuracies, or enjoy it despite its flaws. Kathryn Prociv, a meteorologist and storm chaser, wrote in the Washington Post that she counts herself among the camp of weather buffs who love the film despite its scientific inaccuracies. However, that doesn’t stop her from highlighting some of the groaners in store. For instance, the lead storm chaser (played by Bill Paxton) knows that a twister’s on the way when the sky turns green, but that’s actually not a fool-proof sign: “A green sky is actually a real phenomenon with severe thunderstorms,” Prociv writes. “Storms that appear green are usually at least 50,000 feet high and green is the only wavelength filtered through the thick cloud. Any storm that is 50,000 feet tall is likely capable of producing severe weather such as very large hail and tornadoes, but it does not guarantee a tornado as implied in the movie.” When they do arrive, the tornadoes of Twister also turn out to be a lot more nimble than their real-life counterparts. While a real-life twister does wobble or curve on its path, it doesn’t make the skittery, rapid zig-zags …