Photo: Robert Leslie. Courtesy WSF

Last night, the TEDBlog attended the World Science Festival‘s second night of proceedings, specifically the session titled “Nothing: The Subtle Science of Emptiness.” The evening began with a warm welcome for the illustrious journalist John Hockenberry, who described himself as our “launch vehicle into an area of sophisticated science.” He stayed true to his word throughout proceedings, laughing and joking the audience through deep quantum theory. Some of the most difficult concepts in science today were explained for the amateur enthusiast.

John Barrow, cosmologist at Cambridge first took the stage to present a brief history of nothing. He highlighted the role of nothing in the arts and music, reminding us of The Beatles statement that “Nothing is real,” and John Cage’s piece 4’33″ — the sound of nothing. He took us back to the beginning of human civilization to ask the question of why the concept of zero arose in some cultures but not others? The Greeks, Barrow explained, had no zero, because to create the concept of zero would have been to sow the seeds of negativity.

Barrow went on to address harder science, chronicling the development of the understanding of nothing. Beginning with Aristotle’s view that the vacuum could never be realized, he worked his way through the discoveries of Blaise Pascal, Otto von Guericke and James Clerk Maxwell to arrive at the theories of present-day quantum mechanics. At this point, he made the grim conclusion that vacuum states can change, that our universe may be at an intermediate vacuum state and that there is always the possibility that we could drop to a state whose physics we don’t know and consequences we can’t predict — in other words, the end of all existence as we know it. On a lighter note, it was then time to introduce the panel.

To great applause, John Hockenberry introduced Nobel Prize-winning physicist Frank Wilczek, co-author of the The Large Scale Structure of Space Time George Ellis, and co-director of the ASU Cosmology initiative, Paul Davies. As the discussion warmed up, Ellis launched into one of the physicist’s greatest struggles and one that he deals with in his book Before the Beginning — what was there before space and time, if anything? And how did this all begin?

READ MORE: Explanations of why something rather than nothing, why not to fear the LHC and why we should all heed the example of Copernicus. Davies contributed that if we understand the universe’s beginning as a natural process, governed by laws, it would be a very strange law that applied only once. So, surely, there should have been many bangs. Barrow threw in that it’s pure speculation that there was a beginning to the universe at all. Davies humorously conjectured that as there’s only one way to have nothing, but many ways to have something, statistically something was simply more likely to occur. Finally Wilczek put the nail in the coffin, saying we have something because nothing is unstable. Although we might think of nothing as having the smallest possible energy, he said, it doesn’t.

The night continued with references to the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). When asked if he’s worried about the huge costs incurred to investigate “nothing,” Wilczek joked, “It doesn’t cost anything really, because it’s all in Euros.” When asked if he’s afraid that it will end the world, he replied that nature has always been doing experiments with more violent conditions than we can create and we haven’t ended yet.

As a whole, the panel reminded us that often when we think that we are perceiving “nothing,” in reality, we may have discovered something that we haven’t developed the technology to “see.” Wilczek elaborated, saying our senses provide us only very small samples of reality, so that if where we see nothing, there’s actually a lot going on — well, that’s not very surprising. But, Barrow really summed up the sentiment at the discussion’s end when he said, “Thinking that the only forces that there are are the ones we have the technology to detect is a sort of anti-Copernican theory.”

The evening paid tribute to legendary biologist (and beloved TED Prize winner) E.O Wilson, on the occasion of his 80th birthday, but the program was really a love letter to science itself — for its importance, yes, but also for the inspiration and wonder it offers, and for its deep but often-unacknowledged kinship with the arts.

“Tonight, science and art, long-lost lovers, reunite” Alan Alda said, as he opened the show. And that sensibility pervaded the program, as it blended science and the arts in innovative and unusual ways — from a sequence of broadway musical stars singing light-hearted tributes to science (For example, a guided tour of the periodic table, set to the tune of Gilbert & Sullivan’s “I am the very model of a modern major general”. Brilliant!) to an intellectual pas de deux, featuring Brian Greene waxing eloquent on the nature of the universe, and Joshua Bell performing lyrically on the violin.

The evening included several heartfelt odes to Wilson — the transcendent cellist YoYo Ma performed playfully as young “ants” wiggle-danced around him (Wilson’s career was built on his research on ants); Anna Deavere Smith impersonated Wilson as only she could. And Nobel winner James Watson (of Watson & Crick double-helix fame) paid homage in his own eccentric way: “When we first met, Ed thought I was the most unpleasant person he’d ever known,” Watson explained to a chuckling audience. “And when I first met Ed, I didn’t think there was any point in knowing him. Because everyone knew: Biology was the dumb part of science.”

READ MORE: The NY premiere of Frans Lanting’s LIFE, live performance of the Philip Glass score and Wilson’s central message.

Photos: Robert Leslie. Courtesy WSFWatson and Wilson ultimately became great friends and colleagues. And Watson conceded, in his endearing curmudgeonly way: “We should all be happy that he hasn’t died prematurely.”

The centerpiece of the evening was the soaring New York premiere of Frans Lanting’s, “LIFE: A Journey Through Time.” The multimedia performance sets Lanting’s extraordinary images of the natural world to a Philip Glass score, performed live by the St Luke’s Orchestra and conducted by creative collaborator Marin Alsop.

Lanting, a National Geographic photographer and poet on the side, presented an early version of the LIFE project at TED2005, and it’s extraordinary to mark its progress and evolution. LIFE is now a book and traveling exhibit, as well as a live performance. It captures the beauty and drama of the natural world through a choreographed collage of contrast and color, pattern and motion. A tiny gazelle at the foot of an elephant; a lion half-hidden in twilight grass; a dove soaring; a frog staring; insects, amoebas, volcanoes, sand dunes. Stunningly beautiful, it leaves the audience struck by both the unity and diversity of life.

And the powerful live performance underscored Wilson’s central messages: The beauty and interconnectedness of life, and our urgent need to engage the broader public with the natural world. During a short speech at the reception following the event, Wilson called on everyone to rise to this challenge. “Entire species are slipping away, and we’re just nattering on,” Wilson said. “We must turn our attention to the natural world. And we need everyone’s attention.”

Photos: Robert Leslie. Courtesy WSF

Faith Salie moderated this panel of four scientists (and one singer) on the science of longevity and the nature of aging. Gerontology pioneer Robert Butler, embryologist Renee Reijo Pera, Harvard associate professor of biology David Sinclair and professor and dietary restriction specialist Richard Weindruch all contributed.

+ 80-year-old singer Marilyn Maye opened and closed the night with two charming rounds of songs and commentary on loving life and continuing to feel young well into her years. (Maye appeared on Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show 76 times — more than any other performer.)

+ Robert Butler says one sure-fire way to extend life is to have a sense of purpose. Studies have shown that having a partner — or another reason to “get up in the morning” — contribute to people living longer and living better. He points to the incredible “Longevity Revolution” that happened in the 20th century. In that single period, the average human lifespan in the developed world gained 30 years. He expects this number to increase in the coming years, with new technology.

+ Richard Weindruch says that caloric restriction shows some of the most profound influence on aging. He defines it as “under-nutrition without malnutrition.” He shows a slide comparing two rhesus monkeys, one of which had been given caloric restriction: the difference is striking. Both monkeys are nearing the end of their natural life span, but one of them looks old — the other looks like a regular young, healthy monkey. Weindruch points out that, unlike studies done on other creatures, these rhesus monkeys aren’t all that different from humans. Everybody on the panel is asked: do you practice caloric restriction? The general answer: “Poorly.”

+ Much of the original research on aging was done on yeasts. The gene that is correlated with how fast yeast cells age is a gene that humans also have. A substance that seems to help control and slow down the metabolic pathway associated with aging can be found in red wine — resveratrol — but to get a medical dose of it, you’d have to drink about 1,000 bottles a day.

+ Cancer is intertwined with the processes in aging, and dietary restriction has been shown to slow down cancer, too. If we could reduce cancer rates by just 10% we could save trillions of dollars in health care costs.

+ Renee Reijo Pera looks to the implications on women. Women already experience nearly 50 years of their lifespan in a post-menopausal state. She considers, firstly, why women have such a long post-reproductive life; she likes the “grandmother hypothesis,” which says that having lots of non-reproductive women around helps human survival. But, she says, anti-aging drugs will need to take this unique-to-women issue into account, as there are many effects to consider, including changes in bone density and body mass.

+ Butler says a 5-year increase in the average lifespan of a country creates an enormous advantage to that country in terms of its GDP in comparison to other countries. Healthy aging, simply put, adds wealth — doesn’t leech from it — it just doesn’t pose the liability it might seem to. But there are lots of political issues surrounding the point. The government’s health care plan will have a huge impact on how longevity science really gets under way.

+ What can people do right now to help extend their lives? There is no pill, as of yet. Diet, exercise and purpose are the three sure ways. But into the future, says Pera, it will be important to “call your senator or state representative.” Without funding, this longevity science which is truly on the verge of a breakthrough will be marooned.

John Hockenberry moderated this discussion on how life works, what its prerequisites are and where else we might find it in the universe. Featuring synthetic biology expert Steven Benner, researcher and astrobiologist Maggie Turnbull and cosmologist-astrobiologist-physicist-author Paul Davies. A few of the interesting points:

+ Paul Davies talks about how we can specify what life is — when almost any definition still comes up with exceptions. Davies says life is information replication and processing. (Also, living systems tend to exhibit chirality.) He is interested in extremophiles — organisms which live in extreme environments, such as the waste pools of nuclear reactors. Liquid water, he says, seems to be the one indispensable requirement.

+ Steven Benner: While noting its importance for Earthly life, he hopes we move beyond the idea that water is the necessary condition for life everywhere. “I’m not a big fan of water,” he says. He argues that life is not “aided” by water, but that life is a constant process to in fact mitigate the destruction of self-sustaining systems by the force of erosion. The cells in your body are busy repairing this “water damage” every minute. There is also one major disadvantage to water: it boils. He points out that water is convenient as it holds salts, and the charges that define salts permit the living structures we know to exist.

+ Playing against Benner, Turnbull says she is going to be an advocate for water: we already know water works, why don’t we keep looking for it? She challenges Benner to come up with another substance whose phase-space (i.e. liquid) is as broad as that of water — which ranges 100 degrees.

+ Benner: the double helix of DNA seems to be a very inefficient structure. Why not a structure that replicates based on 2D layers of information, perhaps enclosed in crystal? He says, “When we invented the microscope, a whole new biosphere opened up.”

+ Benner asks, can we specify a level of planetary complexity where we can predict whether life could occur? First of all, we would need a place in the universe where we can construct planets. Second, the planet might have to be tectonically active. Drawing from Turnbull’s comments, he agrees that planetary systems are intertwined in the most crucial way with the emergence of life, but he is skeptical about the Gaia Hypothesis considered as anything more than a metaphor.

+ Maggie Turnbull asks, What signs of life can we find without actually going to these remotest places? She talks about using spectral chemical signals, but also about NASA’s new Kepler mission. She looks forward to a mission that would put a space telescope four-times the size of the Hubble into orbit, paired with a “star-shade” which would block the light from distant stars so we could discern small, Earth-like planets orbiting them. Turnbull distinguishes the analysis of life’s “behavior,” which is accounted for by evolution, versus its “structure,” which is perhaps accounted for by physics and the planetary environment. (“Life,” she says, “includes the planet it lives on.”) She stresses the “continuum of complexity” between very simple systems and very complex ones, and that definitions of life tend to fail because there is so much room for exceptions.

+ Davies says life elsewhere might be morphologically quite like life on Earth, because it would likely evolve around similar constraints: the need to fly, to swim, to harvest energy. He speculates whether life might emerge from quantum systems: “Q life.” When the name of the game is information, you can look in all sorts of places.

Photo of Dr. Calvin O. Butts III, acknowledging Jim Gates and Stephon Alexander at the Abyssinian Baptist Church, as part of the World Science Festival, NYC. From entropybound‘s flickr set (and check out his blog).

TED’s Marla Mitchnick reports from the Saturday night blockbuster “Music and the Brain,” held at the Abyssinian Baptist Church and hosted by the Rev. Calvin Butts III:

Many hundreds of people came out, on a rainy Saturday evening in Harlem, to hear the great Dr. Oliver Sacks speak on “Music and the Brain.” We waited in a line that snaked all the way down 138th Street from the church, around the corner, and way down Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Blvd.

Though the event listing mentioned the location as The First Abyssinian Baptist Church, a historic Harlem landmark built in 1808, which is well known for its choir and its pastor, Calvin O. Butts III, and we all knew that gospel music was to be paired with Dr. Sacks’ talk, no one was quite prepared for the multilayered experience that lay ahead.

A ferociously energetic church lady in a polka-dot dress was hawking CDs along the line, in a voice that demanded one’s attention, and with an intensity that made me quake in my boots. To refuse her wares would take some courage! Thank god the line began to move.

Leaving the stairwell to enter the balcony, the space of the enormous church opened up in all its glory. Silvery pipe-organ pipes rose up everywhere — in the balcony, at the back, the sides, up behind the altar area. I’ve never seen so many. But the church organ had some company: a concert grand piano, a full drum kit, a three-drum African skin-drum kit, and a freestanding jazz organ.

Sitting in the front row of the balcony, we were amongst a happy crowd of folks — who seemed well enough behaved to my eye, but apparently not in the judgment of the large, bald, Abyssinian Baptist employee, wearing an OFFC T-shirt, who was overseeing our section, and who apparently felt we all fell quite short of the mark. Upon closer inspection, the large red letters OFFC on the front of his shirt were accompanied by some smaller yellow letters below, explaining the acronym: “On Fire For Christ!” The fire must have been pretty hot, to judge by the way this fellow made sure that no one put their feet upon the balcony rail, and generally acted like a cross between a stern master at a boys’ school, and a security specialist on a far-off planet — one where no one’s even heard of laughter — who took his job in deadly earnest.

Having recently edited the video for his 2005 TEDTalk on string theory, I recognized Brian Greene and trotted over to say hi to him before the show. When I asked him how the World Science Festival was going, his face lit up, and he said: “It could not be going any better, the events are sold out, they’ve been fantastic, and best of all: people are talking about science!”

There were running jokes throughout the evening, from Brian Greene and Oliver Sacks, both Jewish by birth, about being converted — and all of us non-Baptists in the audience understood why. The Abyssinian Baptist Church is one that understands the powers of spectacle and ritual, and engages in these with dignity and stateliness, but without formality. The professional rigor of the choir is accompanied by natural talent, a general sense of vocal ease, and a straightforward joy in the act of singing for god.

There were ten items on the program before Oliver Sacks’ talk — starting with a gorgeous organ prelude, played by a young woman named Dina Marie Foster Osborne. Another notable experience was the solo African drumming which ushered in the entrance of the choir. Sadly his name was not on the program, but the big, happy, relaxed man who played the African drum set took three skin-drums and two sticks, and made a universe out of them — he went from drumming with joyous intensity, all the way down to the softest beats imaginable, ones that you could hardly hear, and that your ears strained to catch because they were exquisite. Then the entrance of the 51-person choir, all traditionally bedecked, in dark red draping robes that were accessorized with stripey yellow and black African cloth about the neck and sleeves — was awesome. They appeared out of nowhere, snaking their way like a rushing red river through all the aisles at once, and seen from the balcony above, it was glorious.

A number of musical numbers followed — with soloists, all instruments, and a taste of the whole choir’s sound — all instruments were involved, and there were too many talented folks to list them all. When the music got going I looked down, and smiled when I saw that the fearsome lady in the polka-dot dress, the one who’d been hawking CDs outside, was gettin’ down — standing up in her pew and just dancing with abandon.

There was a very adorable moment when four first-graders from the Thurgood Marshall Academy lower school led a tribute to undercredited scientific ancestors, followed by an African libation ceremony for all those Americans who made a way out of no way…

Dr. Calvin O. Butts, III, invited Brian Greene up to say a few words, and gave a generous intro to Dr. Sacks.

When Brian Greene began to speak, he quoted a great story from Sir Ken Robinson about a 7-year-old who followed her own drum in the quest for truth, and then said:

“I may be a Jewish physicist, but I’d be tickled silly if someday I was reincarnated as a Baptist minister!” And I believed it — in speaking about his passion for science, for science education, and for the spreading of the explorational scientific spirit throughout popular culture — his voice had all the cadences of a believing man aflame. He was wearing a very nice suit – but really he should have worn a T-shirt that said “OFFS:” On Fire For Science. He burned up the house with his passion.

Then Dr. Butts gave a warm and generous introduction to Oliver Sacks, and Dr. Sacks stepped up to speak. He spoke of the power of music to exalt us as individuals, and to bond us as a community. He spoke of the neurological differences in practicing musicians’ brains vs. all others — saying that if you looked at Einstein’s brain scans, or at Brian Greene’s, you’d have no notion that they were men of science — but if you looked any any of the brain scans of the people in this choir you’d immediately think — ah yes, I bet these are musicians!

But then he got into the nitty-gritty of the evening — not just the power of music for all of us, but the power of music for people who are in serious trouble.

He went back to stories about the patients from Beth Abraham Hospital, original home of the case studies that made up his stories about how music could jump-start speech, general motor-movement, singing, and even dancing, in patients who’d been frozen in inert states, sometimes for years. He spoke of how the auditory-memory part of the brain is very close to the part of the brain that processes emotion, and that with patients suffering from Alzheimer’s or acute dementia, even when all event-memory, and all personal identity memory is lost, that the ability to recognize familiar music never goes away. He spoke of how rhythm is, in some cases, far more essential than melody or words, and said that rhythm is at the very center of being a human being.

He spoke of aphasia, loss of speech, and how recent discoveries involving music therapy have shown — in cases of severe damage to the left lobe/language center of the brain — that patients can experience — with much work — the right side of the brain taking over the job, and becoming the vehicle for speech: an amazing transformation known as “cerebral plasticity.”

Dr. Sacks spoke with compassion, humor, ease, and an obvious appreciation for the context of this extraordinary event. He ended with the words: “… We can not say that music is an art and not a science, no more than we can say that chemistry is a science and not an art. Science and art come together.”

The Abyssinian Baptist choir followed Dr. Sacks’ talk with many gospel tunes, each more rigorous, more passionate, and more beautiful than the last, proving his point completely.

I looked up and noticed that stern fellow, the one with the OFFC tee-shirt, guarding the balcony door. The choir was singing the rollicking number “Didn’t my Lord Deliver Daniel!” Everyone was dancing in their seats, the harmonies were so surprising and the rhythm was potent. The guard held his body rigid, even in the midst of the swaying multitude, but wait — was that a very subtle bob to his head? Yes — it was almost imperceptible, but I definitely detected a subtle movement about the neck. Even he was not immune to “the impact of music…”

The OLPC gal is asked about the new …
… touchscreen-driven design (from the wonderful Yves Behar)
An “oohhh” goes thru the crowd when she explains how the mesh network works, letting each laptop act as a relay point
She points out another advantage of it: the keyboards become software and not hardware, allowing for multiple languages

Now over to ecovative design
They do nature-based, low-tech, bio-tech solutions
Oh this is very cool. They get mushroom cells to absorb another type of material, and grow in a brick shape…
Instant organic styrofoam replacement!

Check out June’s Twitter feed for more updates!

TED’s Matthew Trost reports from this Saturday session of the World Science Festival:

Nobel Prize winner and cell biologist Paul Nurse moderates a discussion between the leader of the Human Genome Project, Francis Collins, physician and geneticist James Evans, and sociologist Nikolas Rose after an introductory piece of context by Misha Angrist, who recently had his genome sequenced and analyzed by private genotyping firms and is writing a book on it.

+ Francis Collins offered some explanation on the basics of genomics, namely what a genome is and what it does. He classifies the genome as basically an “instruction book.” The human instruction book, printed on regular paper in a regular font size, would be as tall as the Washington Monument.

+ Drawing from Angrist’s thoughts on trying to find some predictive value in what he learned from having his genome sequenced, James Evans puts forward a discussion on Alzheimer’s — the possibility of predicting one’s own risk. He asks whether knowing one’s chances is valuable, or whether it just needlessly damages people emotionally if they find out they’re at high risk. He says there has to be a way of managing the public desire for the information with the possible personal consequences of getting it. He stresses: genomic “risk” stretches across one’s whole lifetime.

+ Collins shares the results of a study in which one group was told their risk of Alzheimer’s. Even if they had a high probability, it didn’t ruin their lives. Instead, it helped them think more about preparing for the possibility.

+ Nikolas Rose objects to the definition of the genome as an “instruction book.” He wants to “dethrone” genomics. He says “genomic metaphysics” has been creeping into science and public understanding. This is a misinterpretation of genetics. Genes are not the “source of who I am.” There are lots of environmental factors that must be taken into account as well.

+ Everybody agrees that the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act that George W. Bush signed into law several days ago is a good thing.

+ Angrist weighs in: Genomics is not something we can “put back.” He reiterates the need to manage it and teach people about the complexities.

+ Paul Nurse offers a philosophical question: what about determinism? Collins isn’t impressed by questions on determinism. It’s been an open question since long before genomics. James Evans, meanwhile, isn’t convinced we have free will. The group agrees that changing the justice system based on the question won’t work. Courts aren’t standing for deterministic arguments as a criminal defense.

+ Collins: after all, half of all people in this audience have a genotype that makes them genetically predisposed by sixteen-fold more than the other half to commit crimes like murder. Those are the people with a Y chromosome — males!

Bill Jones makes this lovely statement that he believed creative breakthroughs happen between people, when people work collaboratively …

There’s something invisible that happens between people, he says.

Side note: I believe, but cannot prove, that that statement is true in many, many ways

Read more notes from this event here >>

All through this weekend, the TED staff will be blogging and Twittering from select events at the World Science Festival. Send us your reports as well, to contact@ted.com!

Illuminating Genius: Unlocking Creativity: Is creativity innate or learned? Does the innovative brain have distinct structural or chemical features? Can we enhance our creativity? Vilayanur Ramachandran will contribute to this session, along with Nancy Andreasen and David Eagleman.

Parallel Worlds, Parallel Lives: Brian Cox will moderate a panel of physicists including Michio Kaku and Max Tegmark as they discuss the possibility of parallel worlds. The panel is to follow a screening of Parallel Worlds, Parallel Lives, a film about Hugh Everett, father of the “many-worlds interpretation” of quantum physics and the film’s director, Mark Everett.

Science of Morality: Patricia Churchland, Antonio Damasio and Marc Houser join philosopher Dan Dennett in a discussion of the science of right and wrong: Why do we cooperate? Is altruism innate? How does morality arise from interactions among biological and social systems?

Looking for the Laws of Life: The forms that life could take seem endless — at least in theory. Some scientists are on the verge of creating it in a lab. But are there universal laws of life, much like the fundamental laws of physics? This event features a vibrant discussion with leading astrobiologists Paul Davies, Steven Benner and Maggie Turnbull.

Faith & Science: Many scientists have found a way to accommodate both scientific inquiry and religious teaching in their belief systems. Other scientists are bringing science to bear on religion and spiritual belief. Actress Julia Sweeney contributes to this intimate look at what scientists have to say about their spirituality.

For more information about event schedules and to purchase tickets, visit the World Science Festival’s website.

The inaugural World Science Festival, a celebration of science and discovery, will take place May 28-June 1, 2008, in New York City. Organized by physicist Brian Greene, who explained string theory at TED2005, the event will bring together a range of speakers — including many TEDTalks favorites such as philosopher Dan Dennett, inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil, mathemagician Arthur Benjamin, and rock-star physicist Brian Cox (whose TEDTalk from 2008 on the CERN supercollider will be posted next week). Many other fascinating people — such as Michio Kaku, Maggie Turnbull, Patricia Churchland and Oliver Sacks — will be speaking or presenting. Browse the list of speakers.

The festival also celebrates film, theater and storytelling about science. Look for the American premiere of Mark “E” Everett’s film about his father, a much-misunderstood physicist. On that same evening further uptown, a roster of distinguished scientists will take the stage at Symphony Space to share stories of experiments gone wrong.

Events for kids and families include a science-themed street fair around Washington Square and an awesome-sounding roundup of cool jobs in science.

Visit the World Science Festival website >>