Archive for the ‘Science’ Category
Jill Tarter: Why the search for alien intelligence matters (TED Prize winner!)
Posted by Rudolf Getel | Filed under Science, TED talks, life
The SETI Institute’s Jill Tarter makes her TED Prize wish: to accelerate our search for cosmic company. Using a growing array of radio telescopes, she and her team listen for patterns that may be a sign of intelligence elsewhere in the universe.
Link to this talk
David Merrill: Siftables, the toy blocks that think
Posted by Rudolf Getel | Filed under 3D, Art, Computers, Conceptual, Design, Music, Science, TED talks, life, web
MIT grad student David Merrill demos Siftables - cookie-sized, computerized tiles you can stack and shuffle in your hands. These future-toys can do math, play music, and talk to their friends, too. Is this the next thing in hands-on learning?
link to this TED talk / Devid Merrill’s Siftables project / Devid Merrill at MIT Media [...]
Steven Strogatz: How things in nature tend to sync up
Posted by Rudolf Getel | Filed under Conceptual, Science, TED talks, life
Mathematician Steven Strogatz shows how flocks of creatures (like birds, fireflies and fish) manage to synchronize and act as a unit — when no one’s giving orders. The powerful tendency extends into the realm of objects, too.
Garrett Lisi: A beautiful new theory of everything
Posted by Rudolf Getel | Filed under Conceptual, Science, TED talks
Physicist and surfer Garrett Lisi presents a controversial new model of the universe that — just maybe — answers all the big questions. If nothing else, it’s the most beautiful 8-dimensional model of elementary particles and forces you’ve ever seen.
Marvin Minsky: Health, population and the human mind
Posted by Rudolf Getel | Filed under AI, Science, TED talks, life
Marvin Minsky’s arch, eclectic, charmingly offhand talk on health, overpopulation and the human mind is packed with subtlety: wit, wisdom and just an ounce of wily, is-he-joking? advice. Marvin Minsky is one of the great pioneers of artificial intelligence — and using computing metaphors to understand the human mind. His contributions to mathematics, robotics and [...]
Jill Bolte Taylor: My stroke of insight
Posted by Rudolf Getel | Filed under Science, TED talks, life
Jill Bolte Taylor got a research opportunity few brain scientists would wish for: She had a massive stroke, and watched as her brain functions — motion, speech, self-awareness –- shut down one by one. An astonishing story.
Murray Gell-Mann: Beauty and truth in physics
Posted by Rudolf Getel | Filed under Science, TED talks
Armed with a sense of humor and laypeople’s terms, Nobel winner Murray Gell-Mann drops some knowledge on TEDsters about particle physics, asking questions like, Are elegant equations more likely to be right than inelegant ones?
Brian Greene: The universe on a string
Posted by Rudolf Getel | Filed under Conceptual, Science, TED talks, life
Physicist Brian Greene explains superstring theory, the idea that minscule strands of energy vibrating in 11 dimensions create every particle and force in the universe.
Superstring theory is an attempt to explain all of the particles and fundamental forces of nature in one theory by modelling them as vibrations of tiny supersymmetric strings. It is considered [...]
Paul Rothemund: The astonishing promise of DNA folding
Posted by Rudolf Getel | Filed under Science, TED talks, life
In 2007, Paul Rothemund gave TED a short summary of his specialty, DNA folding. Now he lays out in clear, adundant detail the immense promise of this field — to create tiny machines that assemble themselves.
The search for dark energy and dark matter
Posted by Rudolf Getel | Filed under Science, TED talks
Physicist Patricia Burchat sheds light on two basic ingredients of our universe: dark matter and dark energy. Comprising 96% of the universe between them, they can’t be directly measured, but their influence is immense.
