Neil deGrasse Tyson: ‘How Much Would You Pay for the Universe?’

in Astronomy, Science | March 19th, 2012

“Nobody’s dream­ing about tomor­row any­more,” says astro­physi­cist Neil deGrasse Tyson in this com­pelling lit­tle video on the decline of the Amer­i­can space pro­gram. “After we stopped going to the moon, it all end­ed. We stopped dream­ing.” The video was put togeth­er by Evan Schurr with mate­r­i­al from var­i­ous sources. In it, Tyson asks us to imag­ine the pos­si­bil­i­ties for tomor­row if NASA’s bud­get were increased to just one pen­ny for every tax dol­lar. It’s a point he raised ear­li­er this month before a U.S. Sen­ate com­mit­tee (read the full tes­ti­mo­ny here), when he said:

The 2008 bank bailout of $750 bil­lion was greater than all the mon­ey NASA had received in its half-cen­tu­ry his­to­ry; two years’ U.S. mil­i­tary spend­ing exceeds it as well. Right now, NASA’s annu­al bud­get is half a pen­ny on your tax dol­lar. For twice that–a pen­ny on a dollar–we can trans­form the coun­try from a sullen, dispir­it­ed nation, weary of eco­nom­ic strug­gle, to one where it has reclaimed its 20th cen­tu­ry birthright to dream of tomor­row.

via The Dai­ly Beast

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Autonomous Flying Robots Play the Theme From the James Bond Movies

in Music, Science, Technology, TED Talks | March 16th, 2012

Yes­ter­day we fea­tured a video of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Sweet Home Alaba­ma” being played on a pair of Tes­la coils. Today we keep the music going with some­thing per­haps even more amaz­ing: a swarm of autonomous fly­ing robots play­ing the theme from the James Bond movies.

The robots were devel­oped at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­ni­a’s Gen­er­al Robot­ics, Automa­tion, Sens­ing and Per­cep­tion (GRASP) lab by grad­u­ate stu­dents Daniel Mellinger and Alex Kushleyev, founders of KMel Robot­ics, under the super­vi­sion of Pro­fes­sor Vijay Kumar. The researchers are work­ing to devel­op agile, autonomous fly­ing robots that can mim­ic the swarm­ing behav­iors of birds, fish and insects. In the video above, which was cre­at­ed spe­cial­ly for Kumar’s Feb­ru­ary 29 TED talk, a swarm of nine quadro­tor heli­copters play musi­cal instru­ments. An arti­cle on the UPenn web­site explains:

In this demon­stra­tion, the “stage” is in a room fit­ted with infrared lights and cam­eras. The nano quads all have reflec­tors on their struts, which allows the cam­era sys­tem to plot their exact posi­tion and relay that infor­ma­tion wire­less­ly to each unit.

Lab mem­bers can then assign each unit a series of way­points in three-dimen­sion­al space that must be reached at an exact time. In this case, those times and places trans­late into notes on a key­board or a strum of a gui­tar. Fig­ur­ing out how to get from way­point to way­point most effi­cient­ly and with­out dis­turb­ing their neigh­bors is up to the robots.

The robots are remark­ably agile, and may some­day be use­ful for a wide vari­ety of appli­ca­tions. To learn more, watch Kumar’s 17-minute TED talk, below, which includes sev­er­al aston­ish­ing video demon­stra­tions of the robots in action.

via Cos­mic Vari­ance

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Michael Shermer’s Baloney Detection Kit: What to Ask Before Believing

in Science | March 15th, 2012

Ear­li­er this week The New York Times pub­lished an inter­est­ing dis­cus­sion between philoso­pher Michael Lynch and physi­cist Alan Sokal on epis­temic first prin­ci­ples, or, as Lynch put it in an ear­li­er essay, the “Rea­sons for Rea­son.” To illus­trate the prac­ti­cal advan­tage of obser­va­tion and induc­tive rea­son­ing in the for­ma­tion of beliefs, Sokal quotes a pas­sage from James Robert Brown’s Who Rules in Sci­ence?:

Cer­tain rea­son­ing pat­terns tend to pro­mote sur­vival; oth­ers don’t. If Og rea­soned: “In the past tigers have reg­u­lar­ly eat­en peo­ple, but I’m sure this one will be quite friend­ly,” then very like­ly Og is not your ances­tor.

Beliefs are impor­tant. How we form them can have pro­found con­se­quences for our own lives and–especially in a democracy–for the lives of the peo­ple around us. In this 15-minute video from the Richard Dawkins Foun­da­tion, Skep­tic mag­a­zine founder and edi­tor Michael Sher­mer gives prac­ti­cal advice on how to sep­a­rate sense from non­sense when form­ing beliefs. The next time some­one tries to con­vince you of a tiger’s friend­li­ness, do your­self a favor and take heed of what Sher­mer has to say.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

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Science & Cooking: Harvard Profs Meet World-Class Chefs in Unique Online Course

in Harvard, Science | March 8th, 2012

Put Har­vard researchers and world-class chefs togeth­er and what do you get? An unex­pect­ed com­bi­na­tion and a course called Sci­ence and Cook­ing: From Haute Cui­sine to the Sci­ence of Soft Mat­ter. Dur­ing the past sev­er­al decades, researchers have pushed the bound­aries of soft mat­ter sci­ence, a sci­en­tif­ic field that looks at how ther­mal stress­es and ther­mal fluc­tu­a­tions change the phys­i­cal prop­er­ties of every­day mate­ri­als. Nat­u­ral­ly this all applies to food and cook­ing. Hence the premise of the course which uses cook­ing to explain fun­da­men­tal prin­ci­ples in applied physics and engi­neer­ing.

You can watch the intro­duc­to­ry lec­ture here and the third tasty lec­ture, The Many Faces of Choco­late, above. The full course can be watched on YouTube. And, of course, we’ve added it to our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

via Har­vard School of Engi­neer­ing and Applied Sci­ences

Relat­ed Con­tent:

MIT Teach­es You How to Speak Ital­ian & Cook Ital­ian Cui­sine All at Once (Free Online Course)

Learn to Code with Harvard’s Intro to Com­put­er Sci­ence Course And Oth­er Free Tech Class­es

1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties

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The Most Astounding Fact According to Neil deGrasse Tyson

in Physics, Science, Video - Science | March 8th, 2012

Astro­physi­cist Neil deGrasse Tyson was asked by a read­er of TIME mag­a­zine back in 2008, “What is the most astound­ing fact you can share with us about the Uni­verse?” Here’s his answer, set to a new­ly-designed video. If you want to see the orig­i­nal TIME Q&A, you can revis­it it on YouTube here. H/T Brain­Pick­ings

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Neil deGrasse Tyson Lists 8 (Free) Books Every Intel­li­gent Per­son Should Read

Neil deGrasse Tyson Remem­bers His First Meet­ing with Carl Sagan

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Neil deGrasse Tyson Remembers His First Meeting with Carl Sagan

in Astronomy, Physics, Science, Television | March 5th, 2012

Carl Sagan left a big void when he died in 1996. His elo­quence, his pas­sion for explain­ing sci­ence to a wider pub­lic, made him a major cul­tur­al fig­ure in late 20th cen­tu­ry Amer­i­ca. Now a new voice is emerg­ing. Neil deGrasse Tyson, like Sagan, is an astronomer and physi­cist with a remark­able gift for speak­ing about the beau­ty and impor­tance of sci­ence. Like Sagan, he hosts a PBS tele­vi­sion pro­gram (NOVA Sci­en­ceNOW) and appears fre­quent­ly on talk shows. The pass­ing of the torch will become obvi­ous next year, when Tyson hosts the sequel to Sagan’s ground-break­ing 1980 TV series, Cos­mos. Tyson’s con­nec­tion to Sagan actu­al­ly began at a very young age. In the video clip above, Tyson tells Ted Simons of the region­al PBS show Ari­zona Hori­zon the sto­ry of a remark­able act of gen­eros­i­ty by Sagan when Tyson was only a teenag­er. If it whets your appetite, be sure to watch the com­plete 25-minute inter­view below. And don’t miss our very pop­u­lar relat­ed post: Neil deGrasse Tyson Lists 8 (Free) Books Every Intel­li­gent Per­son Should Read.

 

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Earth-Size Tornadoes On The Sun

in Astronomy, Science, Video - Science | February 27th, 2012

What a sight to behold. Ear­li­er this month, NASA’s Solar Dynam­ics Obser­va­to­ry (SDO) beamed back stun­ning images of the sun’s plas­ma mov­ing vio­lent­ly around the star’s mag­net­ic field for 30 some hours, cre­at­ing a tor­na­do as large as the Earth itself, with gusts reach­ing up to 300,000 miles per hour. That’s accord­ing to Ter­ry Kucera, a solar physi­cist with NASA’s God­dard Space Flight Cen­ter. NPR has more on the mak­ings of solar storms. Find more awe-inspir­ing footage in our col­lec­tion of 125 Great Sci­ence Videos.

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“The Periodic Table Table” — All The Elements in Hand-Carved Wood

in Science | February 24th, 2012

In 2011, Theo Gray (co-founder of Wol­fram Research, Pop­u­lar Sci­ence colum­nist, and ele­ment col­lec­tor) won the ACS Grady Stack Award for Inter­pret­ing Chem­istry for the Pub­lic. And here you can see why. In this clip, Gray intro­duces you to his DIY mas­ter­piece — the world’s first “peri­od­ic table table.” Yes, we’re talk­ing about a hand-carved wood­en table that brings to life the Peri­od­ic Table, and lets you play with the ele­ments. The project began back in 2002, and now, a decade lat­er, Gray puts it on dis­play in a video pro­duced by the Amer­i­can Chem­i­cal Soci­ety.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Chem­istry on YouTube: “Peri­od­ic Table of Videos” Wins SPORE Prize

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