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.
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 excerpted below. If you’re willing to venture down the rabbit hole, you can access the complete collection of responses here.
Where did we come from? I find the explanation that we were made in stars [that we are all stardust] to be deep, elegant, and beautiful. This explanation says that every atom in each of our bodies was built up out of smaller particles produced in the furnaces of long-gone stars. We are the byproducts of nuclear fusion. The intense pressures and temperatures of these giant stoves thickened collapsing clouds of tiny elemental bits into heavier bits, which once fused, were blown out into space as the furnace died. The heaviest atoms in our bones may have required more than one cycle in the star furnaces to fatten up. Uncountable numbers of built-up atoms congealed into a planet, and a strange disequilibrium called life swept up a subset of those atoms into our mortal shells. We are all collected stardust. And by a most elegant and remarkable transformation, our starstuff is capable of looking into the night sky to perceive other stars shining. They seem remote and distant, but we are really very close to them no matter how many lightyears away. All that we see of each other was born in a star. How beautiful is that?
Kevin Kelly, Wired co-founderhere and don’t miss Susskind’s complete physics lectures here].
Leonard Susskind, Physics Professor, Stanford.
[T]here is one elegant and deep statement (which, alas, is not quite an “explanation”) … that I find very useful as well as beautifully simple.
I refer to the well-known lines Lord Acton wrote in a letter from Naples in 1887 to the effect that: “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” At least one philosopher of science has written that on this sentence an entire science of human beings could be built.
I find that the sentence offers the basis for explaining how a failed painter like Adolph Hitler and a failed seminarian like Joseph Stalin could end up with the blood of millions on their hands; or how the Chinese emperors, the Roman popes, or the French aristocracy failed to resist the allure of power. When a religion or ideology becomes dominant, the lack of controls will result in widening spirals of license leading to degradation and corruption. [More here].
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi; Psychologist
You can dive into the full collection at Edge.org. The photo above was taken by Marco Bellucci.
Underwritten by JPMorgan Chase, the archive lets you navigate through documents by theme and by type of document. Or you can simply use a dedicated search engine. Once you find a document of interest, you can zoom into the content. But, I am not seeing a way to scroll up and down the enlarged pages — something that seriously limits your ability to read any given text. If I’m missing something please let me know in the comments below …
When you write history, you’re always confronted with the question: what facts and events will make it into your historical account, and which ones will be left out? When it comes to this viral video produced by Donolinio Studio, what makes the cut? Europe. America. Men. And a long list of downers: war, depravation, natural disaster, a‑bombs, social crisis, financial crisis, genocide and assassination, all set to a dramatic soundtrack by Hans Zimmer. What gets left out? Anything that seemingly makes life worth living and, with some minor exceptions, human achievement. And, yes, Africa and Latin America too — except for the first World Cup tournament played in Uruguay. (Note: we’re pretty sure that English isn’t the first language of the filmmakers. Hence the spelling errors in the captions.)
Speaking of human achievement and historical omissions, we’d like to pay tribute to Martin Luther King Jr. on his birthday by highlighting two of MLK’s memorable speeches — his soaring “I Have a Dream” speech presented in August 1963, and then fast forward to his prescient “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” speech, delivered just the day before he was assassinated in April 1968.
Back in 1998, Hunter S. Thompson’s most famous piece of Gonzo journalism, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, was brought to the silver screen, with Johnny Depp playing a lead role. From this point forward, Depp and Thompson became fast friends. Indeed, Depp would end up paying for Thompson’s elaborate funeral, which involved shooting the writer’s ashes out of a cannon to the tune of Norman Greenbaum’s Spirit in the Sky and Bob Dylan’s Mr. Tambourine Man.
Above we feature Johnny reading aloud some letters he received from Hunter. The letters are very Thompson-esque, which means, among things, they’re NOT SAFE for work! Part 2 can be found here, and Part 3 here.
Last week, The New York Times profiled Joseph Herscher, a 26-year-old kinetic artist who hails from New Zealand and now develops intentionally “absurd” and “useless” Rube Goldberg machines in his Brooklyn apartment. His latest contraption, called “The Page Turner,” just gets better as it rolls along. Perhaps the best part comes towards the end when Herscher’s pet hamster, Chester, makes a cameo appearance. Enjoy…
In the immediate aftermath of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, when New York and much of the world were still in a state of shock, a group of top-flight actors, directors and other creative workers donated their time and talents for a special project to lure tourists back to the Big Apple. The “New York Miracle” ads were unveiled only two months after the tragedy, and featured stars like Robert DeNiro, Woody Allen, Ben Stiller and Billy Crystal. The commercials were as much a boost to the city’s morale as they were an invitation to tourists. At the end of each segment, Mayor Rudy Giuliani intones: “The New York Miracle. Be a part of it.”
The video above offers a look back at all nine ads. They appear in the following order:
“Deli,” starring Ben Stiller and Kevin Bacon.
“Turkey,” starring Robert DeNiro and Billy Crystal; directed by Barry Levinson.
“Theatre,” starring Barbara Walters; directed by Bryan Buckley.
“Skating,” starring Woody Allen; directed by Joe Pytka.
“Yankee Stadium,” starring Henry Kissinger; directed by Joe Pytka.
“Philharmonic,” starring Yogi Berra; directed by Joe Pytka.
“New York Giants Kicker,” starring Vanessa Williams.
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