Starting tonight, you can watch five hour-long blocks of TEDTalks on the Science Channel. Each hour in this five-part series shares some of the best science, tech, economic ideas and inventions from creative minds featured at TED. Within each hour, TED Curator Chris Anderson gives a brief intro, and then the talks play, uncut, in […]
[vimeo http://vimeo.com/36421901%5D This lovely new video, with lots of extreme closeups, walks us through the scientific facility that Jonathan Drori discussed in his 2009 TEDTalk “Why we’re storing billions of seeds.” For even more, the TED Blog’s Q&A with Drori, where he answers our detailed questions about saving and germinating the seeds that represent some […]
Are we alone? It’s a question with which we are all familiar. Jill Tarter says she started asking it “as a little girl, walking along the deserted and dark beaches of Manasota Key, Florida, holding on to my father’s hand.” She went on to advanced studies in engineering, physics and astrophysics, to pursue a career […]
A Pi day special! At TEDxYouth@BommerCanyon, 9-year-old Chirag Singh confesses his irrational love for Pi — and not the kind you eat: [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KhG3VbNPX5g%5D
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uqly8ERIkHM&w=560&h=315%5D Throughout today, we’ll be sharing incredible video from our new TED-Ed channel. In the deepest, darkest parts of the oceans are ecosystems with more diversity than a tropical rainforest. Taking us on a voyage into the ocean — from the deepest trenches to the remains of Titanic — marine biologist David Gallo explores […]
Photo: James Duncan Davidson TED Curator Chris Anderson talks about the TED-Ed project — a major initiative to bring TED to school and education outside of the classroom. As part of that, he tries his own talk. With a pre-recorded animation (by Andrew Park) playing behind him, he asks a question that has bugged him ever […]
Photos: James Duncan Davidson Ainissa Ramirez comes on stage armed with a blowtorch. Well, that sure got everyone’s attention. She promptly uses said blowtorch to straighten a piece of bent piece of wire. Her point: atoms often rearrange usefully to create entirely different types of structures. The Yale associate professor goes on to explain why this […]
Photos: James Duncan Davidson Bill Nye, The Science Guy, would like to discuss with us our place in space. Not with black holes, or multiverses, but here on Earth, where his dad was born. In World War II, Bill Nye’s dad was building an airstrip on Wake Island, in the middle of the Pacific, when it […]
Photo: Duncan Davidson Aaron Reedy starts by taking us on a quick tour of evolution, natural selection and Darwin. But what’s more interesting than what we know, he adds, and the question all curious students ask him: How do we know all this? The best way to answer this question is to give examples: Fossils: […]
Photo: James Duncan Davidson Joshua Foer challenges the audience to close their eyes, and then he tells a very strange story. In summary: “Imagine yourself standing outside the front door of your home. Notice the color of the door, the material it’s made out of. Now visualize a pack of overweight nudists on bicycles. They are […]
Photo: James Duncan Davidson Taylor Wilson is a 17-year old nuclear physicist. No, really. He charms the audience from the get-go, making the case that “you know, as a scientist, the glass is always 100% full, with water and air.” But he’s really here to make two cases: that nuclear fusion will be the energy […]
Photo: James Duncan Davidson Neuroscientist Tali Sharot comes on stage to discuss the “optimism bias.” It’s a topic that she’s been studying in her lab and she claims that 80% of us experience it. “It” being the tendency to overestimate the likelihood of good things happening to us. As she puts it: “we’re more optimistic […]
Three years ago Jill Tarter wished that everyone would become citizen scientists, and help take part in the quest to find intelligent life elsewhere in the Universe. At TED2012, astronomer Arfon Smith presented a new part of the wish. The Allen Telescope Array is looking for signals from extra terrestrial intelligence on radio frequencies, and a […]
Cynthia Parr takes the stage to update us on a massive TED Prize project: The Encyclopedia of Life. Perhaps a quarter of TED talks feature living organisms. Whether it’s an urgent need for conservation or a creature that can teach us something, it’s obvious that you care deeply about biodiversity. And with your help we’ve made Ed Wilson’s […]
Photo: James Duncan Davidson Drawn into controversy Wearing his wide-brimmed hat, climate scientist James Hansen starts his TEDTalk by asking, “What do I know that would cause me, a reticent midwestern scientist, to get arrested in front of the White House, protesting?” Hansen studied under professor James Van Allen, who told him about observations of Venus […]
Photo: James Duncan Davidson Wade Davis is a familiar figure on the TED stage, but he’s probably best known for sharing his incredible pictures of Tibet or the Amazon or the various farflung places to which he’s traveled. This time, he tells the “story of my own backyard,” the sacred headwaters in British Columbia. “It’s the […]