The best free cultural & educational media on the web
The best free cultural & educational media on the web
≡ Category: Astronomy, Education, Science, Video - Science | ≅ Leave a Comment
Here’s something you don’t see every night: the far side of the Moon, photographed by one of NASA’s Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) spacecraft. The Moon is “tidally locked” in its orbit around the Earth, meaning its rotational and orbital periods are exactly synchronized. As a result, we always see the same view of [...]
≡ Category: Google, Science, Technology | ≅ 1 Comment
Last week, Google hosted a gathering called “Solve for X,” which brought together entrepreneurs, innovators and scientists interested in finding technological solutions to the world’s greatest problems. These solutions weren’t small in scope. No, they were all “moonshots,” ideas that live in the “gray area between audacious projects and pure science fiction; they are 10x [...]
≡ Category: Life, Science | ≅ 3 Comments
In the mid-1990s, Stephen Fry, the British actor and comedian, had a moment of crisis. He recalled in 2006: Eleven years ago, in the early hours of the morning, I came down from my flat in central London. I went into my garage, sealed the door with a duvet I’d brought and got into my [...]
≡ Category: Astronomy, Science, Video - Science | ≅ Leave a Comment
With the largest solar storm since 2005 lighting up the night skies this week after a pair of solar flares sent streams of charged particles hurtling toward the earth, prophets of doom have been lighting up the Internet. Bob Thiel, a self-described “Church History and End Times Examiner” and author of 2012 and the Rise [...]
≡ Category: MIT, Science, Video - Science | ≅ 1 Comment
Cambridge, Massachusetts is one of the world’s great intellectual crossroads. With Harvard University at one end of town and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology at the other, many of the most influential thinkers of our time either work there or visit. That gave César Hidalgo an idea. Hidalgo is a professor at M.I.T., where he [...]
≡ Category: Science, Video - Science | ≅ Leave a Comment
Two weeks ago, we featured Harvard Thinks Green, a series of six TED-style lectures presented by Harvard experts, each focusing on the environment and strategies for reversing climate change. One thing Harvard Thinks Green didn’t offer was a primer on climate change itself, a good scientific explanation of the underlying problem. Enter Global Warming (YouTube – iTunes – [...]
≡ Category: Science | ≅ 3 Comments
The dream of flight fired the imagination of Leonard da Vinci in the early sixteenth century. In designing his famous flying machines, the painter, sculptor, architect, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist – ah heck, let’s just call him a Renaissance man — closely studied the mechanics of birds in flight, noting the elegant ways in which they [...]
≡ Category: Science | ≅ Leave a Comment
It’s a new year, which means it’s time for the Edge.org to pose its annual question to some of the world’s finest minds. The 2012 edition asks the question, “What is Your Favorite Deep, Elegant, or Beautiful Explanation?” And the replies — 190 in total — feature thoughts by Sherry Turkle, Robert Sapolsky, Steven Pinker, and Daniel Dennett, plus the ones [...]
≡ Category: Current Affairs, Harvard, Science, Video - Science | ≅ 1 Comment
On December 8th, six “all-star environmental professors” came together at an event called “Harvard Thinks Green” and presented short, TED-style talks about the environment and strategies for reversing climate change. The event started with James McCarthy (Professor of Biological Oceanography) asking the question (see above), “Is it too late to avoid serious impacts of climate change?” A good question to [...]
≡ Category: Science | ≅ 5 Comments
Scientific discovery is an engine of economic and military power, and America has long prided itself on its leadership in research. But as astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson points out in this video, there are some dark clouds on the horizon. When you look at the trendline, Tyson says, scientific research in America is clearly in [...]
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