Astrophysicist and astronomer Seth Shostak made a daring bet in his 2012 TED Talk: We’ll find extraterrestrial life within 24 years or he’ll buy you a cup of coffee. This isn’t just wishful thinking — technological advances over the past few decades have amplified the scope of space exploration monumentally, allowing us to search the […]
Exploring space generates tons of data — so much data that most of it is studied using algorithms, not human eyes. But algorithms are not very good at being creative. What happens when we let humans look at data? Sometimes, even amateurs find things that are surprising, remarkable and weird. Astronomer Tabetha Boyajian came to TED2016 with a story about one of those weird things. The story […]
Denise Herzing has spent more than 25 years studying dolphins in the wild, living each summer on a boat in the Bahamas for better access to our finned friends in their natural habitat. Today, in Session 8, she shared her work in using an interactive device to communicate with the dolphins — and let them […]
TED playlists are collections of talks around a topic, built for you in a thoughtful sequence to illuminate ideas in context. This weekend, three new playlists are available: “Ancient clues,” “Planes, trains and automobiles” and “Are we alone in the universe?” Ancient clues Five fascinating talks by archaeologists and evolutionary biologists about humanity’s beginnings and […]
Astronomer Jill Tarter wants us all to ask the question, “Are we alone?” As director of the SETI Institute (it stands for the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence), Tarter is dedicated to seeking the answer, as well as to imparting upon one and all the importance of the search. In 2009, Tarter was awarded the prestigious […]
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 […]
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 […]