Science-Videos

The study of extrasolar planets has recently entered its heyday with the launch of NASA's Kepler mission. Kepler has found that planetary systems are very common in our galaxy. Along the way, we've been surprised by the diversity of planetary systems, many of which bear little resemblance to our own solar system. Josh Carter presents these most alien of alien worlds, including planets orbiting two suns and a planetary system with two very different planets very close to one another.

Leonard Susskind of the Stanford Institute for Theoretical Physics discusses the indestructability of information and the nature of black holes in a lecture ...

Why should you bother to wake up tomorrow knowing that we're all going to die billions and billions of years from now when the universe turns to absolute zero, when the stars blink out, when we have nothing but neutron stars and black holes? Dr. Kaku says that billions of years from now we may be able to move to a different universe.

Via Sakis Koukouvis

"The Singularity University aims to assemble, educate and inspire a cadre of leaders who strive to understand and facilitate the development of exponentially advancing technologies and apply, focus and guide these tools to address humanity's grand challenges."

Via jean lievens

The secrets of our home galaxy revealed with all new state of the art computer recreations from JPL and NASA.

Big Ideas presents Seth Lloyd of the Massachusetts Institute for Technology on Quantum Life, how organisms have evolved to make use of quantum effects.

DNA stores and replicates information. Special sequences of different nucleic acids (adenine, cytosine, guanine, thymine) encode life's blueprints. These nucleic acids can be divided into a classical part (massive core) and a quantum part (electron shell and single protons). The laws of quantum mechanics map the classical information (A,C,G,T) onto the configuration of electrons and position of single protons. Although DNA replication requires perfect copies of the classical information, the core that constitutes this information does not directly interact with the copying machine. Instead, only the quantum degrees of freedom are measured. Thus successful copying requires a correct translation of classical to quantum to classical information. It has been shown that the electronic system is well shielded from thermal noise. This leads to entanglement inside the DNA helix. It is an open question if this entanglement influences the genetic information processing. In this talk I will discuss possible consequences of entanglement for the information flow and the similarities and differences between classical computing, quantum computing and DNA information processing.

Since the 70s, the Magnetic North Pole has moved more than 1500 km at a rate of 10 kilometres a year. In the 1980s, this increased to 30 km a year. Today, the Pole travels 50, even 60 km - close to 150 metres a day.

 

Scientists don't quite know why its speed has increased these past 20 years. The magnetic pole is moving northwest of the geographic pole and may soon be across the Arctic Ocean in Siberia.

To find their bearings, sailors the world over must know the exact angle of difference between the two geographic and the magnetic north poles: the 'magnetic declination.'

The magnetic pole moves from the North to the South and vice versa every 250,000 years on average and does it very suddenly. Over 180 reversals have been recorded already.

As the intensity of the magnetic field tends to diminish, our planet becomes more susceptible to solar storms. In 100 years, the intensity has decreased by 15%."

http://www.cbc.ca/documentaries/natureofthings/2010/northgoessouth/

Join leading researchers Dr. Eric Horvitz of Microsoft Research and Dr. Peter Norvig of Google for an intriguing discussion about the past, present, and future of artificial intelligence, moderated by KQED's Tim Olson.

Via Szabolcs Kósa, Dr. Stefan Gruenwald

Series from Channel 4 featuring Sir Martin Rees.

 

There is a fundamental chasm in our understanding of ourselves, the universe, and everything. To solve this, Sir Martin takes us on a mind-boggling journey through multiple universes to post-biological life. On the way we learn of the disturbing possibility that we could be the product of someone elses experiment.

Marcus Chown of New Scientist Magazine on his Top 10 Bonkers Things About the Universe.

The full lecture title is "Cancers - Their Genomes, Microenvironments, and Susceptibility to Bacteria-based Therapies" by Bert Vogelstein. The Johns Hopkins Center for Biotechnology Education and the Department of Biology in the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences hosted the American Society for Microbiology's Conference for Undergraduate Educators (ASMCUE) on the Homewood campus. Bert Vogelstein gave the closing plenary lecture, "Cancers - Their Genomes, Microenvironments, and Susceptibility to Bacteria-based Therapies". He teaches at John Hopkins University.

ASMCUE, now in its 18th year, is a professional development conference for approximately 300 educators. Each year, its steering committee organizes a program that offers access to premier scientists in diverse specialties and to educators leading biology education reform efforts. For more information on the conference, go to http://www.asmcue.org/page02d.shtml

Dr. Kaku addresses the question of the possibility of utopia, the perfect society that people have tried to create throughout history. These dreams have not been realized because we have scarcity. However, now we have nanotechnology, and with nanotechnology, perhaps, says Dr. Michio Kaku, maybe in 100 years, we'll have something called the replicator, which will create enormous abundance.

Via Sakis Koukouvis

Exploring strange new worlds....

Throughout human evolution, multiple versions of humans co-existed. Could we be mid-upgrade now? At TEDxSummit, Juan Enriquez sweeps across time and space to bring us to the present moment -- and shows how technology is revealing evidence that suggests rapid evolution may be under way.

Via Sue Tamani, Sakis Koukouvis, Dr. Stefan Gruenwald

Slow Motion video of bullet impacts made by Werner Mehl from Kurzzeit. These are by far the best slow motion bullet impacts available anywhere. Watch for the hollow point rounds in the ballistics gel.

Cosmos: A Personal Voyage is a thirteen-part television series written by Carl Sagan, Ann Druyan, and Steven Soter, with Sagan as presenter. It was executive-produced by Adrian Malone, produced by David Kennard, Geoffrey Haines-Stiles and Gregory Andorfer, and directed by the producers, David Oyster, Richard Wells, Tom Weidlinger, and others. It covered a wide range of scientific subjects, including the origin of life and a perspective of our place in the universe. The series was first broadcast by the Public Broadcasting Service in 1980 and was the most widely watched series in the history of American public television until The Civil War (1990). As of 2009, it was still the most widely watched PBS series in the world. It won an Emmy and a Peabody Award and has since been broadcast in more than 60 countries and seen by over 500 million people.