Last fall, we featured a talk by the hot-shot theoretical physicist Lawrence Krauss, “A Universe from Nothing,” which answered some big enchilada questions: What is our current understanding of the universe? When did the universe begin? What came before it? How could something come from nothing? And what will happen to the universe in the future?

The lecture gave a snapshot of the thinking laid out in Krauss’ newly-released book by the same title: A Universe from Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather than Nothing. The book just hit the stands, and right now it’s #51 on the Amazon bestseller list. Not bad for a text that delves into the complex mysteries of dark matter, quantum mechanics and cosmology.

In case you missed the original lecture, we have posted “A Universe from Nothing” below for your viewing pleasure. (It has racked up over a million views on YouTube.) And you can catch the video trailer for Krauss’ new book right above. Find more great physics videos in our collection of Free Online Courses and Great Science Videos.

Physicist Lawrence Krauss Explains How Everything Comes from Nothing is a post from: Open Culture

Brilliant but unmotivated, Stephen Hawking was a 21-year-old PhD student at Cambridge when he first noticed something was wrong. He was falling down a lot, and dropping things. He went into the hospital for tests, and learned he had amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS. The doctors told him he would gradually lose control of every muscle in his body.

“My dreams at that time were rather disturbed,” Hawking said. “Before my condition had been diagnosed, I had been very bored with life. There had not seemed to be anything worth doing. But shortly after I came out of hospital, I dreamt that I was going to be executed. I suddenly realized that there were a lot of worthwhile things I could do if I were reprieved.”

The doctors gave the young man two and a half years to live. That was in early 1963. Over the next half century, Hawking defied all odds and went on to become one of the most celebrated scientists of the era, making major contributions to quantum cosmology and the understanding of black holes. Along the way, the wheelchair-bound Hawking became a cultural icon, a symbol of disembodied intellect and indomitable spirit.

This coming Sunday, 49 years after his grim diagnosis, Hawking will turn 70. A scientific conference in his honor got underway today at the University of Cambridge’s Centre for Theoretical Cosmology, and will culminate on Sunday with a public symposium, “The State of the Universe,” featuring some of the world’s greatest astronomers and physicists, including Martin Rees, Kip Thorne and Saul Perlmutter. You can watch live streaming video of the events at the official website.

To help celebrate, we present Errol Morris’s 1992 film of A Brief History of Time (above), Hawking’s bestselling book.  Morris weaves biography in with the science, interviewing members of Hawking’s family–his mother, sister and aunt–along with friends and colleagues, including Roger Penrose, Dennis Sciama and John Archibald Wheeler.

A Brief History of Time was Morris’s first film as a director-for-hire (he was recruited by Steven Spielberg for Amblin Entertainment), which created some difficulties, but Morris was pleased with the outcome. He later said, “It’s actually one of the most beautiful films I ever shot.” The film won the Grand Jury Prize for Documentary Filmmaking and the Documentary Filmmaker’s Trophy at the Sundance Film Festival.

In 1992 Morris told the New York Times Magazine that A Brief History of Time was “less cerebral and more moving” than anything he had worked on before. “This feeling of time, of aging, of mortality combined with this search for the most basic and deep questions about the world around us and ourselves,” Morris said, “is pretty persuasive stuff.” Find it listed in our Free Movies Online collection, within the Documentary section.

Watch Errol Morris’ Tribute to Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time is a post from: Open Culture

It’s another case of the whole being greater better than the sum of the parts. Between 1981 and 1993, documentary producer Christopher Sykes shot three films and one TV series dedicated to the charismatic, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman (1918-1988). We have presented these documentaries here individually before (some several years ago), but never brought them together. So, prompted by a post on Metafilter, we’re doing just that today.

We start above with The Pleasure of Finding Things Out, a film directed by Sykes in 1981. It features Feynman talking in a very personal way about the joys of scientific discovery, and about how he developed his enthusiasm for science. About the program, Harry Kroto (winner of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry) apparently once said: “The 1981 Feynman [production] is the best science program I have ever seen. This is not just my opinion – it is also the opinion of many of the best scientists that I know who have seen the program. It should be mandatory viewing for all students whether they be science or arts students.”

The Pleasure of Finding Things Out was followed by Fun to Imagine, a Sykes-directed television series that got underway in 1983. Feynman hosted the series and, along the way, used physics to explain how the everyday world works – “why rubber bands are stretchy, why tennis balls can’t bounce forever, and what you’re really seeing when you look in the mirror.” 12 episodes (including the first episode shown above) await you on YouTube. Thanks to Metafilter, you can access them easily right here: 1) Jiggling Atoms, 2) Fire, 3) Rubber Bands, 4) Magnets (and ‘Why?’ questions), 5) Bigger is Electricity!, 6) The Mirror, 7) The Train, 8) Seeing Things, 9) Big Numbers and Stuff (i), 10) Big Numbers and Stuff (ii), 11) Ways of Thinking (i) and 12: Ways of Thinking (ii).

Let’s skip forward to 1989, when PBS’ NOVA aired The Last Journey of a Genius, a television film that documented Feynman’s final days and his longtime obsession with traveling to Tannu Tuva, a state outside of outer Mongolia. For the better part of a decade, Feynman and his friend Ralph Leighton schemed to make their way to Tannu Tuva, but Cold War politics frustrated their efforts. Sykes’ documentary runs roughly 50 minutes and features an ailing Feynman talking about his wanderlust. He died two weeks later, never having made the trip.

Five years after Feynman’s death, Sykes directed the final documentary in his trilogy, No Ordinary Genius. This film traces the professor’s adventures inside and outside of science, using stories and photographs provided by Feynman’s family and close friends. The documentary originally aired on the BBC in 1993, and it appears in our collection of 450 Free Movies Online. Also don’t miss the introductory physics lectures that Feynman presented at Cornell in 1964. You will find them listed in our big collection of 400 Free Courses Online. Just scroll down to the Physics section and enjoy.

The Richard Feynman Trilogy: The Physicist Captured in Three Films is a post from: Open Culture

In the world of everyday experience we perceive three dimensions of space. Through any point, no more than three perpendicular lines may pass. The notion that there might be more than three dimensions has traditionally been the domain of science fiction shows like The Twilight Zone.

In this engaging lecture (click image above to watch), theoretical physicist Lawrence Krauss explains the growing respectability of extra-dimensional theories in physics, tracing the evolution of the idea from Plato’s cave through Edwin A. Abbott’s Flatland, and from Einstein-Minkowski spacetime through Kaluza-Klein theory, on into modern-day string theory.

Titled “Hiding in the Mirror: The Mysterious Allure of Extra Dimensions,” Krauss’s presentation was given in September at a conference in Oslo, Norway, organized by the Fritt Ord Foundation. The speech lasts about an hour and is followed by a question-and-answer session.

via Richard Dawkins

Related Content:

Lawrence Krauss Explains How You Get ‘A Universe From Nothing’

Lawrence Krauss: Every Atom in Your Body Comes From a Star

Free Physics Courses (From our big collection of Free Online Courses)

Lawrence Krauss on the Mysterious Allure of Extra Dimensions is a post from: Open Culture

Last week, the reports about Higgs Boson, otherwise called the God particle, put CERN and the Large Hadron Collider back into the news, leading some to ask: What exactly are Higgs and the Collider all about? We’re glad you asked. And what better way to answer that question than with a fly, little rap by Kate McAlpine (aka Alpinekat) and Will Barras. You can find the full lyrics below the jump, and the parts about Higgs Boson right below…

The Higgs Boson – that’s the one that everybody talks about.
And it’s the one sure thing that this machine will sort out
If the Higgs exists, they ought to see it right away
And if it doesn’t, then the scientists will finally say
“There is no Higgs! We need new physics to account for why
Things have mass. Something in our Standard Model went awry.”

But the Higgs – I still haven’t said just what it does
They suppose that particles have mass because
There is this Higgs field that extends through all space
And some particles slow down while other particles race
Straight through like the photon – it has no mass
But something heavy like the top quark, it’s draggin’ its ***
And the Higgs is a boson that carries a force
And makes particles take orders from the field that is its source.
They’ll detect it…

Twenty-seven kilometers of tunnel under ground
Designed with mind to send protons around
A circle that crosses through Switzerland and France
Sixty nations contribute to scientific advance
Two beams of protons swing round, through the ring they ride
‘Til in the hearts of the detectors, they’re made to collide
And all that energy packed in such a tiny bit of room
Becomes mass, particles created from the vacuum
And then…

LHCb sees where the antimatter’s gone
ALICE looks at collisions of lead ions
CMS and ATLAS are two of a kind
They’re looking for whatever new particles they can find.
The LHC accelerates the protons and the lead
And the things that it discovers will rock you in the head.

When LHCb sees where the antimatter’s gone
ALICE looks at collisions of lead ions
CMS and ATLAS are two of a kind
They’re looking for whatever new particles they can find.
The LHC accelerates the protons and the lead
And the things that it discovers will rock you in the head!

The Large Hadron Collider Rap, Yo is a post from: Open Culture

A Reddit.com user posed the question to Neil deGrasse Tyson: “Which books should be read by every single intelligent person on the planet?”

Below, you will find the book list offered up by the astrophysicist, director of the Hayden Planetarium, and popularizer of science. Where possible, we have included links to free versions of the books, all taken from our Free Audio Books and Free eBooks collections. Or you can always download a professionally-narrated book for free from Audible.com. Details here.

If you’re looking for a more extensive list of essential works, don’t miss The Harvard Classics, a 51 volume series that you can now download online.

1.) The Bible (eBook) - “to learn that it’s easier to be told by others what to think and believe than it is to think for yourself.”

2.) The System of the World by Isaac Newton (eBook) – “to learn that the universe is a knowable place.”

3.) On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin (eBook – Audio Book) - “to learn of our kinship with all other life on Earth.”

4.) Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift (eBook – Audio Book) – “to learn, among other satirical lessons, that most of the time humans are Yahoos.”

5.) The Age of Reason by Thomas Paine (eBook – Audio Book) – “to learn how the power of rational thought is the primary source of freedom in the world.”

6.) The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith (eBook – Audio Book) - “to learn that capitalism is an economy of greed, a force of nature unto itself.”

7.) The Art of War by Sun Tsu (eBook – Audio Book) - “to learn that the act of killing fellow humans can be raised to an art.”

8.) The Prince by Machiavelli (eBook – Audio Book) - “to learn that people not in power will do all they can to acquire it, and people in power will do all they can to keep it.”

Tyson concludes by saying: “If you read all of the above works you will glean profound insight into most of what has driven the history of the western world.”

He has also added  some more thoughts in the comments section below, saying:

Thanks for this ongoing interest in my book suggestions. From some of your reflections, it looks like the intent of the list was not as clear as I thought. The one-line comment after each book is not a review but a statement about how the book’s content influenced the behavior of people who shaped the western world. So, for example, it does no good to say what the Bible “really” meant, if its actual influence on human behavior is something else. Again, thanks for your collective interest. -NDTyson

H/T goes to Galley Cat

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The Harvard Classics: A Free Digital Collection

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Neil deGrasse Tyson Lists 8 (Free) Books Every Intelligent Person Should Read is a post from: Open Culture

As The New York Times noted in a 2007 profile, Walter Lewin long had a cult following at MIT. But when his free courses went viral on the web (find them in the Physics section of our big collection of Free Online Courses), the physics prof became an “international Internet guru,” the first star of the open course movement. It’s a sign of his stardom that someone made a mashup of Lewin’s “best lines” (drawn, not spoken) from his Classical Mechanics course. For more great physics videos, don’t miss these items:

Richard Feynman’s 1964 Cornell Physics Course Goes Online

Physics from Hell: How Dante’s Inferno Inspired Galileo’s Physics

Lawrence Krauss Explains How You Get ‘A Universe From Nothing’

h/t goes to Coudal.com

The Best Lines of Walter Lewin, MIT Physics Prof & Web Star is a post from: Open Culture

Think of it as the ultimate slow-motion movie camera. Researchers at M.I.T. have developed an imaging system so fast it can trace the motion of pulses of light as they travel through liquids and solids. To put it into perspective, writes John Markoff in The New York Times, “If a bullet were tracked in the same fashion moving through the same fluid, the resulting movie would last three years.”

The research was directed by Ramesh Raskar of the Camera Culture group at the M.I.T. Media Lab. In an abstract, the research team writes:

We have built an imaging solution that allows us to visualize the propagation of light. The effective exposure time of each frame is two trillionths of a second and the resultant visualization depicts the movement of light at roughly half a trillion frames per second. Direct recording of reflected or scattered light at such a frame rate with sufficient brightness is nearly impossible. We use an indirect ‘stroboscopic’ method that records millions of repeated measurements by careful scanning in time and viewpoints. Then we rearrange the data to create a ‘movie’ of a nanosecond long event.

You can learn more by watching the video above by Melanie Gonick of the M.I.T. News Office, or by visiting the project website.

via Kottke

M.I.T. Camera Captures Speed of Light: A Trillion-Frames-Per-Second is a post from: Open Culture

In October, The Royal Society opened its historical archives to the public, bringing 60,000 peer-reviewed papers to the web, including Isaac Newton’s first published research paper. You can dive into this parallel digital archive here.

Bonus: If you’re looking to bone up on Physics, you can find many free physics courses in our big collection of Free Online Courses. Leonard Susskind’s class on Classical Mechanics may be of particular interest here.

via The Guardian / ht @eugenephoto

Sir Isaac Newton’s Papers & Annotated Principia Go Digital is a post from: Open Culture

With a fast-moving mixture of comedy and seriousness, an interview on The Colbert Report is something of an improvisational flying trapeze act. “Stephen Colbert is an amazingly good interviewer,” writes physicist Sean Carroll, “managing to mix topical jokes and his usual schtick with some really good questions, and more than a bit of real background knowledge.”

Beneath the humor there is a sense that Colbert understands and respects science. The sad thing, writes Carroll, “is that more people are exposed to real scientists doing cutting-edge research by watching Comedy Central than by watching, shall we say, certain channels you might have thought more appropriate venues for such conversations.” But the exposure is all too brief. An interview on The Colbert Report typically lasts only a few minutes.

So it was interesting when Colbert stepped away from his comedic character for a more in-depth conversation with one of his frequent guests, astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson. The interview took place last year at Montclair Kimberley Academy in Montclair, New Jersey. Earlier this week Tyson uploaded the video to the website of the Hayden Planetarium, where he is director, but the server was overwhelmed by the resulting surge in traffic. So someone placed the version above on YouTube. It’s an interesting, and witty, one-hour-and-19-minute conversation. For more of Tyson with Colbert, you can watch his appearances on The Colbert Report at the Hayden Planetarium site.

via Kottke

Stephen Colbert Talks Science with Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson is a post from: Open Culture